Insidious Adaptation

The  flatter  lands outside of the Black Hills are full of culture. A culture that from my perspective and one that was made aware to me by a client I had years ago, is  ultimately  broken. It wasn’t just the free street dance a family of three eastern Nebraskaners wandered into, it wasn’t just the varying Casinos as soon as we entered the South Dakota border, it wasn’t just the faulty, cardboard cutout front of shiny buildings and what was sold as progress in varying areas, or the large BlackHills Gas building that made me take away something important. I wish I could isolate feelings to a single event. It would be great if life worked that way, just wish for one thing to be undone, and then the isolated problem would go away. Like Marty McFly undoing one thing to result in a happy ending. Only, that isn’t life, that isn’t, how does Drake put it, “God’s Plan?”    Life is more intricate than an isolated event, and even though there is typically a peak out a...

Pretty audacious title right? Well, what can I say, living a, "better" life is what everyone is looking for, so might as well cut right to the chase. It is the chase after all, or as I inked on my skin in my early twenty's, "For the pursuit of Happiness..." that we are all active participants in. Even if your race is a passive one-mundane job, spending most time avoiding stress, or distracting from self; we are all in this same race. The only difference is the varying time frames, so we never know who is closer to the finish line until we turn back around and they aren't running anymore. Recently a trip to South Dakota with the family (my wife and daughter of closer to three than two) taught me a most-valuable lesson: to be grateful, yet, I am not responsible for things as much as a part of me says I am.  Gratitude, meaning , " the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness." T herefore,  being  gr...