Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Even if they weren't always right...we choose to use their words.

While sporting a Charlotte Knights baseball jersey at a July 4th block party a neighbor I had never met broke down the barriers of conversation and asked if I was a fan of the sport. Confidently I shook my head from side to side admitting that I was a much bigger fan of 80% off sales.

But I didn’t answer his question…I bounced around the main thought giving him reason to assume.

The Stock Market has enjoyed four incredible successful days with numbers that resemble life as we once knew it. Is it safe to assume America is back or is this nothing more then the birth of another propaganda driven setback?

Riverside Jr. High Art teacher Mrs. Foster spent the entire first quarter of the 7th grade painfully unveiling the color wheel and through patience we learned the true roots of violet, lime, baby blue, candy apple red and totally on fire orange were connected to four basic colors none of which were black.

I assume my house is strong enough to withstand the horrid winds and hail that rip through the Carolina’s during low flying out of control summer thunderstorms; by assuming I’ve allowed myself to be blinded from truth...I live in a forest surrounded by drought injured trees that find tremendous amounts of comfort slamming to the earth unexpectedly.

How did we get this way?

Ask my stepfather Joe and he’ll tell you our lives became poisoned by our own actions the moment he stopped taking his belt off to tan our hides.

I’ve yet to meet the 30’s plus person that doesn’t spin their wild twenties into a page from their parent’s books. Good mood, bad reception to fake smiles and clammy handshakes we spew things out so fast that our subconscious relies on what it’s been taught rather than put energy in busting down the walls of new shapes and designs.

When goals still aren’t met with acceptance and dreams continue to fall…the end result is assumption. We assume it’s safe to stop trying. Lost is the needle in the haystack; the part of the color wheel that introduces your eyes to a bright beautiful diamond.

I sat at a campsite for four days staring down at the dry dirty dusty earth beneath my feet. It wasn’t pretty dirt; no bright orange Georgia clay or deep dark stick to anything Montana mud or Idaho jet black soil. The lack of grass, weeds, wild onions, cattails or anything living forced my subconscious into a state of havoc. Looking up I saw every size and color of tents, dirty faces on grown men, ripped clothing and a serious lack of creative control. Modern day campers bring everything to their site…including the kitchen sink and uninvited Mother-in-law.

Assumption scared the hell out of me. On the weekend we celebrate this nations birth the picture delivered was an invitation to feel what life must be like living in a tent city; the very cities that have recently dotted the map after Hurricane Katrina, the tornados in Joplin and massive earthquakes in Japan.

Through assumption we’re forgetting about the requirements of what a diamond must experience before becoming the hardest strongest stone and most unforgettable jewel on the planet.

It’s become too easy to buy character.

Helen Keller clearly stated that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.

Richard Andrew King reminds us that no human can become great until there’s heat, pressure and scars. Once upon a time in America there was a work ethic.

No morning passes that I don’t sit here and watch a red headed woodpecker tap on the large tree outside this radio station studio. Its bark torn to shreds, moss no longer interested in being seen with its long time friend. No limbs carry leaves of green and its beginning to lean toward seat I sit.

Take this very visible dead tree with an assumed path of destruction and connect it to your personal dusty campsite. Do the jersey’s you wear make you a fan of the sport? Are you meaninglessly casting your Mom’s words out expecting nothing in return because you assumed at your child’s age you didn’t listen either? I assume this building could withstand a 40 foot tree falling on it. The woodpecker on the other hand doesn’t give a rats butt about the conclusion of this story.

If life as you currently know it randomly evolved into a tent city…would you grow to love the dirt on a grown mans face or would you force him to wash the diamonds off the windows to his soul?

Your answer is the character you’ve become…

I will always believe in you first.

arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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