05.19.08
Recurrent Theme - “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”
When I was a teenager and would go camping with my parents, one day a couple of young men, looking a little rough around the edges, pulled into the camp site on their motorcycles. To my very conservative parents, motorcycles equaled trouble. We soon found out that these guys had brought a guitar and liked to sing and play, so, for me, it was instant rapport.
The one song they liked to sing most often had to do with traveling (the long and the rocky road). The road, of course, seemed to be a metaphor for the path of life itself. With young voices they sang … “and the folks you meet, there are all kinds. Some are bad and some are good, some are doing the best they could, and some have tried to ease my troubled mind.”
Those few lines pretty much sum up humanity. One does meet “all kinds.” I’ve found, over more than a half century, that people are all pretty much involved with their own “agendas,” the word I use to denote actions taken to promote oneself. I suppose agendas are not necessarily bad, but it sure is refreshing when a body takes it upon himself or herself to help ease the burden of an associate.
One thing I’ve learned is that the people you count on the most, will inevitably let you down. They are too tired, too indifferent, or too preoccupied to care much about anyone other than themselves. However, to make up for the slack, there is always some unexpected gesture of love and kindness that will be bestowed upon one, sometimes from a total stranger. Life does seem to be a balancing act of scales.
Of course, we can’t sit back and wait for life to come to us. I throw back my head and laugh when people ask me how it is that I “got to do” this or that. I’ve worked like heck, all of my life, studying, learning, and doing all that has made me who I am today, and provided me with what I know. A day is not a “good day,” if I have not learned something new. That’s what makes life fun … for me.
The recurrent theme, repeated in the chorus of the song I’d started to mention is “can’t help but wonder where I’m bound.” I suppose young people would think about that sentence in a much different way than a woman my age. I do consider, from time to time, when to invest in my final piece of “real estate.”
It seems a long time since I was a teenager. That’s mainly because it WAS a long time. Time will fly and soon my grandson will be a teenager, and then a young man, and the cycle of life will continue, as well it should. I’m happy to have reached my destination of where I was bound. I’ve arrived at a place of safe haven and to a relationship that refreshes and nourishes my soul.
I am ever thankful for the journey, and for ALL the folks I’ve met, “good or bad.” They have all shaped and molded my character, made me more resilient, and less timid. One by one, the “bad” ones have done me the courtesy of taking “exit stage left,” for a final time.
Patricia Cummings
