UNEXPECTED WONDERS

I need to be so intensely present that the present consumes my past and my future -- in a great “ah-ha” conflagration.  
I need unexpected wonders.  
I need to weep at the beauty of wild horse romps and pelicans passing.  
I need silence so deep that I can hear the whispering pulse of a bird’s wings a hundred yards above me.  
I need giant trees that stand witness to centuries of scurrying humans.  
I need vistas so broad and deep that I sense the curvature of the earth.
I need stars that crowd each other like light glinting off the ocean on a brilliant day.

Can’t wait any more.  I’m starting to carry the stink of mediocrity, like fresh food forgotten in the back of the refrigerator.  

Among my favorite Mark Twain quotes is “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”   

I’m thinking that two years from now, regret would already have calcified me.  

All the paths I have taken for the past forty-five years that led to hard lessons --  I regret none of these.  Those bumps in my road led here, to a much greater capacity for joy.  

It’s not taking any new paths that would disappoint me.  It’s not answering the need for unbridled wonder that I would regret.