One life to live- but so many choices

Isn’t watching the sunrise a wonderful way to start the day? Of course, watching it set is a wonderful way to end your day…..Most of us catch one or the other, but not many of us get around to doing both- no matter which we prefer.

How would you feel if you had two good options and you chose one, but you were still ambivalent? Is second guessing in our nature? Or is it a sign of the myth of the greener grass? Or is it modern society that allows us too many opportunities- constantly bombarding us with emails from job postings, travel deals, dating sites, and fifty different ways to change our minds and leave what we have for something else.

Like the teenage sensation found in the 2010 song, Fireworks…..

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?

Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

Do you ever feel already buried deep? Six feet under screams, but no one seems to hear a thing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw

So, if you have two good choices——what breaks the tie? Why do we choose one good guy over another? Why do we choose one good job over another? Why do we even make choices when we wish we could do both?

Have you ever wished you could clone yourself and live more than one life? Have you ever wondered about people who live a double life?

Living a double life- means a person lives two separate and very different lives and they appear to be a different person in each.

http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-cobuild/double%20life

I have wished I could live 2 or 3 or 5 different lives at once. People sneer at Charles Kuralt, but maybe he was living his dream. He had his life that was mainstream and his life that was a little off the beaten path. Isn’t that how he directed his career? We have the Charles Kuralt nature trail from his incessant travels and charming storytelling.

http://www.paige-williams.com/stories/SecretLifeofCharlesKuralt.pdf

“Mr. Kuralt and I lived a life, and perhaps it was not a life you approve of,” she testified. “But it was a life together.” Kuralt took great care never to cross that life with his other, or to “mix the families,” as Pat’s daughter, Kathleen, put it. Perhaps only Kuralt himself can say why.”

I guess I am tolerant of him because I can understand. However, this next link points out the ugliness of it all. Maybe, many of us do remember him on TV, we can hear his reassuring voice and yet we can’t imagine how he is part of this infidelity scene. We can understand how we wish to hold onto everything and everyone in our lives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/health/march99/infid033099.htm

The cottage he chose was in the town of Derrynavglaun, near the Glencoaghan River, on a meadow that sloped to a bog and filled with wildflowers in summer. Charles bought it for Pat, a gift.

“OK,” the attorney continued. “One question that should be directly asked is that you knew that Mr. Kuralt was married during this period? And by this period, I’ll define it as throughout the 1970s and 1980s.”

“Yes.”

“Were there specific discussions about . . . him being married?”  “No. There were – I went through bouts of despair, and there were arguments, but we never directly talked about, about his life in New York. I knew it existed. Charles – I read in some of this material that’s coming out of Washington today how there’s a tendency for men of power and, and fame, to sometimes compartmentalize their lives.

And I think that’s what Charles did. He had a life in New York. I did not inquire into it. And he did not discuss it with me.”

So, we are confronted on every side with normal human desires to “hold on” to people, places & things. It is difficult and distressing to have to choose between two desirables.

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” — Einstein

Where does curiousity take us? Do we puzzle over options?

Where? At work, at home, across state lines, across extremes of interests, across our entire lives, we have options.

From the start, Charles Kuralt impressed the Baker children as a kind man who was genuinely interested in their lives and future.

In 1990, Charles Kuralt’s newest book came out, his memoir, “A Life on the Road.” He wrote, “There is no contentment on the road, and little enough fulfillment. I know that now. I am acquainted with people who live settled lives and find deep gratification in family and home. I know what I have missed, the birthdays and anniversaries, the generations together at the table, the pleasures of kinship, the rituals of the hearth. And still I wander. . . .”

They were in their mid-fifties now, Charles and Pat, and had behind them the trips, the gifts, the Septembers in Montana, all the years of letters and poems he sent, like this one at Christmas:

What I Will Give You . . .

A string of pearls

A suit and sweater

A Rubens print

A holly tree

And me.

A mixing bowl

A sofa and chair

A set of china

A butcher knife

My life.

A year earlier, Charles had written Pat into his will. “In the event of my death I bequeath to Patricia Elizabeth Shannon all my interest in land, buildings, furnishings and personal belongings onBurma Road,Twin Bridges,Montana.”

He took her out of his will in 1994, one of the most pivotal years of his life.  For “Charles Kuralt’s America” he would spend one month in the twelve places he loved best, at the time of year he loved best. New Orleans in January, Grandfather Mountain in May, Twin Bridges in September, New York City in December. . . . He gave February to Key   West, Florida, and called Pat to join him. She still hoped Charles would leave Petie, so she took him up on his first-class ticket and went. In Key   West, she realized again nothing ever would change.

When Charles invited her to Charleston a month later, Pat said no. When he asked her to meet him at the cabin, again she said no. Charles, busy and tired, returned a letter to a man who had approached him about selling the place in Montana. “This might be the best solution eventually. The property naturally should be one ranch, but I crave at least one or two more seasons there, and haven’t made up my mind.” After all, he had ended “A Life on the Road” this way:

“There is a cabin in a grove of cottonwoods beside a western river. . . . I love this place. “When I am here, I think I would be happy never to leave it.  Every trip has to end.” He called the chapter, “A Place to Come Home To.”

That September, he turned sixty in Montana. “I thought of my father, back home in North Carolina,” he wrote. “I’d be going to see him in a few days. He was seriously ill but still in good spirits, and he was eighty-six years old. I’d settle for that, I thought. . . . Eighty-six would be all right for me, too. Eighty-six, if I could make it, would give me twenty-six more Septembers in Montana.”

Charles had never taken good care of his health. He enjoyed rich food and liquor and too many cigarettes.

A few days later, on July 2, Charles wrote to his old friend Bill Friday, a former president of theUniversityofNorth Carolinasystem. “I know you have better things to worry about, but I thought I would ask if you have any way of finding out if there are a couple of burial plots in Chapel Hill?”

On July 3, J.R. called Charles. Pat was anxious to speak to him, he said. No, said Charles; he would be home soon and would call her then.

The next day, he died.

They buried him between a crape myrtle and a dogwood tree in Old Chapel Hill cemetery, his mahogany casket covered in red roses. More than 1,600 people came to the memorial service to say goodbye, the famous and the unknown, among them Patricia Shannon. At some point that day, she showed Charles’ letter to someone at the funeral, and the secret began to unravel.

—May 24, 1998

Nothing is insignificant– Samuel T. Coleridge

No, we may not be the ones living a double, triple, quadruple or more life. Maybe we can’t, but we can understand why someone could and would. Even if we have never been unfaithful to a spouse, lived in the same house our entire adult lives, worked for the same company for 30 years and know everyone who has done likewise….perhaps we just made the right choice for us.

Today, as we reflect on how many people may not make the same choices, can we see how they might wish to enjoy the lifestyles that differ, the love that differs, the people and experiences that differ, the places that differ. He had the kind of profile that caused him to be able and yet unable in many ways, to handle this situation.

However, we have to come to terms with our own proclivities either before or after we are forced to make some choices. The path divides and separates- some straddle it for as far as they can go and as long as they can justify it to themselves. It doesn’t even have to be understood or accepted. As long as it is tolerated and reinforces some sense of meaning and value, then we will continue to see human beings reaching out further than society, morality or their own personal energy levels can readily sanction.

Just remember, every choice in life takes you somewhere.

In the end, your life is a sum of all the choices.

When faced with two good options, you don’t need to know everything. You just need to take one step at the time. That opens lots of doors which may give you a rainy day pass, a get out of jail free card or bring you to another decision point. Just be clear with yourself when you are “all over the place”.  Remember, if you have so many strings and feelers out there and your foot is stuck in so many doors…..you can’t keep going like that forever. You are going to get a broken bone, when someone starts slamming these doors on your leg. Even if you think you can “do it all” and “have it all”,  and you are just not sure what you will do, consider yourself counseled, ” you can’t do it all.” You can’t live all the different lifestyles and you can’t do all the different jobs and you can’t meet all the different people. But, you may find comfort, that whatever you are doing and wherever your are…..you can surely make a difference to someone, somewhere, somehow…..just like he did!!!!

http://www.mattamuskeetlodge.com/

Who could have guessed that a Fireworks song would take me to a NC icon and nature trails!!! I love that about writing from the heart of inspiration- never know where it will lead or who you will find on the journey of words.

http://www.northeast-nc.com/kuralt/

http://www.visitnc.com/journeys/articles/eco-trips-trails/1/adventures-on-the-charles-kuralt-trail

http://www.hydecounty.org/tours/hc-tours.htm

Take the road less traveled….

http://www.amandashome.com/road.html

So often this is where we stop and stare- standing motionless before the choices. We get to another divide in the road and don’t want to choose!!!!  What is your position?  Are you down a path, are you standing at the opening, are you on the upper deck watching, where are you?

Right now? Today? Every day is a new day. You can start fresh.

Post Script 7.28.13 in a note from  www.paradiseinn.com I got a message to listen to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRaieZmhNzs They are right, it is great! thanks!