A Sample of the Past sounds a lot like Today

The first rock concert I remember going to was an outdoor concert in Colorado, at a ski village that was hosting a summer bike race. Surrounded by family, we all watched as The Samples tore up the stage. Shortly after the concert, I remember my mom buying one of the band’s albums, and we listened to it for the rest of that summer.

More than a decade later, I sit here tonight re-listening to that album; and I realize how much has changed in not just the last ten years, but just in the last few years. It’s odd that the feelings this music evoked when I was not even a teenager are much the same feelings they evoke now. Even though my life is in a different place then it was back then, I feel like I’m moving through the same type of transition now as then.

Last time the transition involved moving several thousand miles from all that I knew at the time; this time the move is more relational then physical.

I remember being assigned in school to read a book called “Things Fall Apart;” I recall being told the book was about how nothing ever truly lasts in this life.

Right now I’m quickly approaching that precarious position, on a cliff’s edge, where I will either fall or fly. One more step will decide where I end up from here.

The thing is, I can’t shake this feeling that while I’m fully committed to stepping over the edge, sink or swim, fall or fly; my headlong race to the cliff’s edge has separated me from those I’ve traveled with up to this point in my life.

Whether it be a difference of opinion, or worldview, or the core of what drives you onward in life; I feel I’m leaving friends behind. Good friends.

Should I pause, divert my course, even stop? Maybe the reason things fall apart around you is that where you are headed is not a place those that have traveled with you thus far can go. They’ve steered you in the right direction, gotten you to where you needed to be to start your headlong run at that cliff, but there’s a point where everything else falls away, and it’s just you; and just that cliff.

And even though you’ll be leaving behind what you know, and those you’ve cared so much about; you need to jump. You can’t stop. Because they wouldn’t want you to.

… to those left behind in the pursuit…