maybe I am destined to be motivational for someone and it is ordained by God above. If you like this I guess you have to give him the props, I just put ink to paper...
Imagining the best possible outcome
but sometimes life isnt all fun
things come and they go
but there are certain truths i know
Loving and being loved is the greatest thing
and if we can reach Love for all, inspiring
I often see how time ebbs and flows,
you simply have to listen and watch the flowers grow
On and on we all march to our end,
but the important thing is to be a friend.
keep your head up when times get rough
and lend a hand to those who find the way tough
keep moving, onward, upward.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Overdue
No, this is not a tale of past due rentals or literary loans gone sour. This is simply a rant of the past. I have bleed, I have slept, and I have eaten, just like everyone else. Time has marched on and the lack of any communicae has, for the most part, gone the way of the do-do, so to speak. Meaning, out of sight or thought, out of mind.
Speaking of which, I must tell a quick story about a boy whom I cannot name for his safety. He lives in one of the "larger" remote towns in a random part of a war-torn country. He is small for his age, so small in fact he got angry with me once for picking him up, yelling that he was too old to be playing around like that and I should respect his age not his size. I mean it was said in hurried Arabic and broken English as he shook his fist at me, but after I put him down he said we were still friends. See, he speaks broken English too so it wasn't very hard for me to get the idea. Enough English in fact to week in and week out ask me for whatever caught his eye in my vehicle. More often than not, I would give him a soda or blow pop and even once went so far as to give him a whole bag of tootsie rolls my mother sent me. He was, to say the least, insatiable. Will I miss him? Part of me will, but the other part of me won't because I will be home and time will fade his memory. But what I will never forget is the last time I saw him. He asked me for a football, saying, "Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow, you bring me football." (He doesn't know how to say the days of the week or any number of days, be it one, two, three, etc.) I sadly smiled at him and said, "Sorry buddy, I'm going home." He looked at me quizzically and then said with question-like inflection, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, me, football." I replied, "I'm going home to America man." He asked, "Home to America?!!?" Me: "Yes." He hung down his head and slowly walked next to me until I reached my truck. All I could think to do was teach him how to say, "Pop Tart, Delicious." After two tries he said it and I gave him a box of pop tarts. I closed my door as he ran off to live his life.
That sums up my time here pretty well. A brief moment in the span of lives we touched here, be it in good ways or not so good ways. Time will go on for these people. New units will continue to come and go and this nation will continue to work toward stability. Will it ever reach that end? No one can say for sure. Are there a lot of obstacles impeding the way? Aren't there always... All I can really say with certainty, is that I have done my best to make a difference and hopefully, my efforts to keep my word to the people I made promises to will live on beyond my departure.
Have I grown as a person? I don't know. Have I learned a lot about my job and had a fun, albeit unbelievable time doing it? Yes.
I'm not sure what else I have to say so I will end it here and hope this, in some way gave you a glimpse into some of the highs and some of the lows we experienced here. I look forward to reliving some of the memories and not so much for others. More to follow, as always...
Speaking of which, I must tell a quick story about a boy whom I cannot name for his safety. He lives in one of the "larger" remote towns in a random part of a war-torn country. He is small for his age, so small in fact he got angry with me once for picking him up, yelling that he was too old to be playing around like that and I should respect his age not his size. I mean it was said in hurried Arabic and broken English as he shook his fist at me, but after I put him down he said we were still friends. See, he speaks broken English too so it wasn't very hard for me to get the idea. Enough English in fact to week in and week out ask me for whatever caught his eye in my vehicle. More often than not, I would give him a soda or blow pop and even once went so far as to give him a whole bag of tootsie rolls my mother sent me. He was, to say the least, insatiable. Will I miss him? Part of me will, but the other part of me won't because I will be home and time will fade his memory. But what I will never forget is the last time I saw him. He asked me for a football, saying, "Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow, you bring me football." (He doesn't know how to say the days of the week or any number of days, be it one, two, three, etc.) I sadly smiled at him and said, "Sorry buddy, I'm going home." He looked at me quizzically and then said with question-like inflection, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, me, football." I replied, "I'm going home to America man." He asked, "Home to America?!!?" Me: "Yes." He hung down his head and slowly walked next to me until I reached my truck. All I could think to do was teach him how to say, "Pop Tart, Delicious." After two tries he said it and I gave him a box of pop tarts. I closed my door as he ran off to live his life.
That sums up my time here pretty well. A brief moment in the span of lives we touched here, be it in good ways or not so good ways. Time will go on for these people. New units will continue to come and go and this nation will continue to work toward stability. Will it ever reach that end? No one can say for sure. Are there a lot of obstacles impeding the way? Aren't there always... All I can really say with certainty, is that I have done my best to make a difference and hopefully, my efforts to keep my word to the people I made promises to will live on beyond my departure.
Have I grown as a person? I don't know. Have I learned a lot about my job and had a fun, albeit unbelievable time doing it? Yes.
I'm not sure what else I have to say so I will end it here and hope this, in some way gave you a glimpse into some of the highs and some of the lows we experienced here. I look forward to reliving some of the memories and not so much for others. More to follow, as always...
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