Hell yeah!

Marine Corps Camp Lejeune, North Carolina: I’m 19 and thinking, What do you really want to do for a career?

Often, there are different facets of what’s in our hearts and what we want to be.

I recently spoke with a young lady who told me she, like me, wanted to be a cop, but she ended up in another career. She also told me she would like to help older people or troubled teens. That’s a woman who hears her heart. She’s still young, so she has time to fulfill her purpose, to live her passion.

Maybe we need to listen to ourselves more often.

My answer back at Camp LeJeune? I wanted to be a writer.

But I soon turned my back on it.

After the Marine Corps, I realized I also wanted to be a cop; I’d always liked the idea. My dad was a Transit cop.

Law enforcement was a solid job with a pension; my dad had one. Writing was harder to make a living from, and it didn’t come with a pension. I also wanted a family, a house. So, I was realistic; I went with cop—the NYC Transit Police.

So I put my passion for writing in my back pocket.

Hordes of us take the secure path, as I did, and later might feel we sold ourselves out.

Choices, we all have them. Some of us choose wisely; others not so much.

Rarely, but some of us even work in a prestigious profession and then switch dramatically to what our hearts want, like Pete in The Gift.

I salute those who have shunned the practical pension job because they loved their passion so deeply they went all in.

But, I’m happy with my choice; it worked for me.

I loved being a cop. Mostly.

I love writing. Completely.

I’m grateful for this portal to the world. A window through which my words fly farther than I ever imagined: Across America, into Asia, Europe, the Middle and Far East, even Australia.

Thank you, readers, around the globe, for your interest. I’d love to see some comments from you at the bottom of this page; others would too. Easier now than ever before, for all. Tanslation is no problem.

For decades I’ve enjoyed focusing on life around me, then bringing that focus to pen and page. I’ve written 16 longhand journals about them.

Sometimes that focus involved a banal moment, but looking with new eyes; seeing people and things with an inquisitive eye. It’s a fresh perspective.

Like this one,

Apr. 14, 1983

Today I’m going to work on the front lawn, but first I thought I’d do a little writing.

I was standing in line at the bank (Chemical Bank, W. Islip, NY) the other day when I fully experienced and admired the moment.

I did it much the same way one would admire a painting.

A person enjoys a painting by noticing how the artist captures the familiar poses of the human body, the natural bends, the folds, and creases of the clothes.

But how much better might it be to view such a superb painting not from outside the frame but from within?

As you stand at the center of this living hologram, you see different perspectives of the painting’s ever-changing portraits.

That man with the creased face, wearing a green sweat jacket and a green seaman’s cap, stands by the shelf lined with pens, chained to it, and rows of forms in little boxes neatly standing at the rear of the shelf.

A bayman? A gardener? A construction worker?

Maybe none of these, but a man on his day off who likes to dress like one. Maybe today he imagines himself as a bayman, when he really is off from his desk job in an air-conditioned office with nylon carpet and Muzak.

The lady in front of the cashier wears a gray 3/4 coat, her shoulder bag is slung over her shoulder, and her two-year-old is hoisted in her arms. It makes her hip jut out as she patiently waits for the cashier to finish.

Now, impatiently, she sets the child on the ledge just beneath the teller’s partition. The child now kneels in awe at the finger tapping behind the partition. The sound pierces the stillness: the clacking cacophony that the cashier orchestrates.

One of the tellers is wearing a sweater and corduroy pants. How different from the bank days not so long ago.

The Bank Manager, or Assistant, sits at his desk in the corner. He is slightly balding, and his blue suit is crisp, the vest and tie denoting his rank.

I also think a person feels and becomes what he wears.

Don’t the heels of the boots have a greater effect than we might be aware? Don’t we swagger a bit with chiseled leather cowboy boots? As if we were about to mount a steed or kick open a saloon door?

If these are combat boots, don’t we feel more indestructible as the laces pull the leather tight against our calves? Be more ready to charge up a hill than we would in sneakers?

I realize I slouch. But when I wore a police uniform and stepped onto a train, my shoulders were square, my back straight.

These human forms around me are so much richer for their movements. The eyes are so meaningful, whether basset-lidded or seaman-squinted. 

These life paintings surround us, but we rarely stop to fully experience and enjoy them as we would a painting.

So ends my longhand entry from 43 years ago.

Eckhart Tolle: “ We can make ‘traffic jams and line-ups’ enjoyable, because instead of projecting yourself into the future, you use the waiting to go more deeply into the Now”

Being in the moment, as I did in the bank, gives us a refreshing pause. Why stand and dwell on our past, our future? They don’t exist, only this moment before us exists.

So maybe take a break when you can, just enjoy the moment.

I still enjoy moments of live art on line,

in the street,

or on the beach.

I was in my mid-forties when I wrote my bank entry. That toddler, in the springtime of her life, would now be the age I was when I saw her; her mom might be grandma to her child.

Wherever they may be, they are still with me.

If you, my readers, have been gifted with two or more passion potentials, consider choosing the one you believe will bring you the most overall happiness.

But you’ll still have a passion in your back pocket.

And when you’re ready—whip it out.

Use it at a new job, or in volunteer work, or at a hobby.

But—live your passion.

My brother-in-law, a WWII vet, was a cop too. But he loved drawing cartoons and building model airplanes, especially flying rubber-band planes.

After retirement, he whipped out his passion and soared. See how he was High on Love, America, and Rubber Bands.

Now, in my autumn years, I’m in reverie by the sea.

And sometimes—I see you in me.

Be well,

Leebythesea

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And of course, please visit my dark side essays, Wherethesundontshine