Jungle Trails

Dearest LML friend,

I haven’t heard from you in quite a while. I hope all is well with you.

You may not know this about me, but I have always seen myself as an individual who forges and maintains trails (more so from the time I was a young adult until about 10 years ago.) I’m not sure I was ever “really good” at it, but I certainly spent a lot of time and energy on the endeavor.

Forging new trails was no big deal … the real work was in maintaining them. Some trails took more work than others. The other day I was thinking about how the tools for maintaining those trails had changed over the years. It started with phone calls, then letters, on to emails, Facebook, instant messaging and finally, texting. Each tool was lighter than the one before, faster, and more efficient, but it seemed to me, the repairs never lasted as long … I had to go back more frequently to repair places where the trail had washed away, and potholes had appeared.

It was never a burden maintaining the trails … I needed them to get to those places most important to me, and the effort was never an issue. The joy I had traveling on them, far outweighed the effort. The fact is, I used to think “forging trails” was part of my DNA and was as natural to me as walking. I did have a passion for it.

Over this last decade, I became more aware of just how many trails I’d been a part of forging, and how many of them I was consistently trying to maintain on my own. In the last few years, I’ve found myself bargaining for more time to repair the trails, limiting my efforts to doing only minor repairs to them, and on occasion, allowing some of them to become almost irreparable, before spending the time to fix them.

I’m not sure at what point it turned, but I came to the realization, I had too many trails to maintain. I determined I had no choice but to allow some of them to erode away. They quickly became overgrown, and now, I believe I’d be hard pressed to find them again, even if I wanted to.

On the positive side, by allowing some trails to disappear, it afforded more time to focus on the remaining ones. It worked for a while, but as time passed, I again, found myself having to allow more of them to disappear.

I hate to admit it, but I have reached a point in my life, where I sense I can no longer maintain them. I never thought I‘d say that, not in a million years! So, I stand here, watching the last of those I could not salvage, “grow over”… as each of them disappears, something in me dies… and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

My dear, dear friend, as the trail between us disappears, remember …

I have always cared about you, appreciated your friendship and enjoyed the fellowship. I will never forget you and this journey we’ve shared.

From the heart of an average MK person,

phil