Category: Life Story

Friday Morning FYI – 7/3/2015

Ron Delaney Jr3 Comments

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – I’m-on-the-other-side-of-the-planet-and-have-no-idea-when-this-will-go-live-Part-2 edition! – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

This week’s FYI is about the strangeness of duality:

When someone else hates something you love, that thing can be considered bad and good at the same time. If it’s a problem for you two (or even just one of you), you need to uncover which it really is, thereby figuring-out who’s right (not that being right is the important thing). There can be no compromise on this, so don’t go nuts looking for one. Just figure it out and go from there.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 6/26/2015

Ron Delaney JrLeave a comment

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – I’m-on-the-other-side-of-the-planet-and-have-no-idea-when-this-will-go-live edition! – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

This week’s FYI is about (or roundabouts) reacting to sh!tty situations. Went a little non-literal and meta with this one, for whatever reason *shrug*:

Passive aggressiveness and snark are BFFs. And they hang out with mean-spiritedness, insecurity, and ugliness. I know because I used to run with them. I still see PA every now and then, but he brings out the worst in me, so I try to avoid him. Sometimes it’s hard because he never calls ahead, and just shows-up at the worst times. And he brings beer. I’ve gotten good at recognizing his footsteps, though, and won’t answer the door when I know it’s him. I’ve also gotten good at spotting and avoiding people he’s been around. I don’t get mad at them or anything, though. He’s a charming bastard despite being really, really unattractive.

Stay away from him. He’s just not a good guy.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 6/12/2015

Ron Delaney JrLeave a comment

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI, my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

This week’s FYI combines writing and life into quite the ham-fisted message (if I do say so myself):

Everyone is writing their own story. The sad truth is you won’t know how all those stories play-out because some of the people in whose stories you’re interested won’t let you read what they write. Let those stories go, and get back to writing yours.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 6/5/2015

Ron Delaney JrLeave a comment

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI, my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

This week’s FYI is a little ranty, and about the words others put right in our earholes, but we don’t hear:

How often we ignore what others tell us about themselves. I’m not talking about body language, tone, or any of that. I mean the WORDS that come out of people’s mouths. We hear but don’t accept, and then react like we’ve been slighted – angrily casting blame. We paint Rockwellian pictures, script elaborate scenes and monologues, and erect statuesque pedestals – all outside of someone’s confessed reality – and then cry like children burned by touching a scolding oven we were warned was hot.

If a serpent tells you it bites, it goddamn bites. Don’t cuddle with it thinking it lied about biting, or just doesn’t know itself, or won’t bite YOU. Leave it the hell alone.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

If a tree can grow under a city train station

Ron Delaney JrLeave a comment

Philosophical treatise on trees, life, and self-limitation in 3… 2… 1…

 

Tree under a train station

 

I’d just hopped off my train at Newark Penn Station and was walking along Platform A toward the far stairs – the recently rediscovered crooning of Alanis Morissette occupying my headspace. I happened to glance to my left and spotted, of all things, a tree.

Gorgeous, delicate bubblegum blossoms, gently-waving against the glowing yellow of abused safety rails and the broken reds of rusted tracks. And leaves, like green rips of skin, scattered across the mammoth gray spine of the station.

I kept walking, subconsciously aware of the crashing human wave rolling behind me – everyone rushing to get wherever their watches commanded them to be – but also reached for my phone. And then it was too late and I was in the stairwell, headed down to the marble shoebox that is the concourse, to go right back up to Platform 1 and the Path.

But I didn’t catch the Path. Not right away. I didn’t even try. I hopped the turnstile (because you’re locked-in once on the Path Platforms, apparently) over to Platform B, hustled back down to the concourse and back up to the now-deserted Platform A.

I took my phone out and took the above shot. And below shot. And several other shots, too. This was a few days ago. I needed time to think about why the tree effected me the way it did, calling me back to chronicle that moment rather than sleepwalking into my day. Here’s what I came up with:

Simply put, if a tree can grow under a city train station, what else is possible?

 

Tree under a train station - wide

 

Or perhaps the question really is, what do I believe is possible?

We spend so much time limiting ourselves. “I can’t.” “I’ll never.” “There’s no way I could.” Tree seeds don’t believe that. They just know to grow – to flourish, even under the worst circumstances. Life doesn’t believe that, either. Where there’s even the smallest patch of earth, life is. And persists. And endures, without doubt or complaint. Like that stunning tree reaching toward the sky from beneath a smothering cage of iron and concrete.

If life, of which we’re all atoms, doesn’t believe in limitation, why should we?

Go be a tree.

 

Thanks for reading.

{RDj}