Rothacker Reviews

The Journey by Mary Oliver

From the archive of Panhala by way of Dan Oestreich


 

The Journey 

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save. 

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Dream Work)

In Your Planner

David, you always carried around words that would inspire you throughout the day in your planner. The following were the ones that made their way into your first planner.

Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.      - J.C. Penney

                                                    

Two essential qualities in a good organizer are a thorough and constant perception of the end in view, and a power of dealing with masses of details, never forgetting that they are details and not becoming their slaves.  -Sir Arthur Helps

Docia Fletcher, who died in Baytown, Texas, one week before her 112th birthday, said her secret to long life was: live right, eat right, dress right and leave other folks' business alone.

You get quality Matthew says, by assuming the responsibility and authority for making sure the job gets done right the first time.

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of objective people and endure honest criticism; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, by a well-raised child or social improvement; To know even one person has breathed a little easier because you lived; To accomplish this is to have succeeded.  - Harry Emerson Fosdick

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness and prosperity to everyone you meet.

To make all of your friends feel that there is something positive in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and expect only the best.

To be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you would be about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and to happy to permit the presence of trouble.               -Christian Larsen

Images by Mark Lawrence on Flickr

You Must Prevail

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. James Stockdale

You leaned heavily upon this quote David, to get through working for companies that sucked the life and soul from your being and then steam rolled your conscious to make sure that any semblance of life was crushed and any remnant of it was forever unrecognizable.

He puts up with a lot of bureaucrap but he says that avoiding crap shouldn't be the objective in finding the right work. The right question is, how can I find something that moves my heart, so that the inevitable crapstorm is bearable?

You've paid into social security since 1972. There might have been a collective total of two years when the crapstorm was bearable.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer couldn't stop the crapstorm either, but it sounded nice.

This I Resolve To Do

David, the following is from your friend, Napoleon Hill.

A man, being of sound health and disposing mind, hereby set down these things that I have resolved: I will profit by the experience of others and will not wait to learn sense by my own experience. I will be teachable. From every human being I encounter I will learn something. I will decide by my intellect what my tastes ought to be and make myself like the right things. I will put away the weakling's argument that " I can't help my likes and dislikes."

I will keep clean in body and mind. I will not accept as a satisfactory standard what the majority of people are and do. I will allow no person or institution to coerce my opinion; my judgment shall remain unterrified, unbribed, unseducted. In this I will not be truculent and offensive, but modest and open to conviction. I will not declare my belief in anything social or scientific that I do not clearly understand. I will learn to do some one kind of work expertly, and make my living by that. I will take from the world only the fair equivalent of what I give it. I will never take revenge, will harbor no grudges, and will utterly eliminate any spirit of retaliation. Life is too short for destruction; all my efforts shall be constructive.

I will not engage in any business or sport that implies fraud, cruelty, or injustice to any living thing. I will hurt no child, punish no man, wrong no woman. In everything I do I shall strive to add a little to the sum of happiness and subtract a little from the sum of misery of all living creatures. I will constantly try to make myself agreeable t all persons with whom I come in contact. I will not fret at this, nor dodge it, but so live that I am ready to go. I will believe that honesty is better than crookedness, truth is better than lies, cleanliness is better than dirt, loyalty is better than treachery, and love is better than hate or coldness.

I will trust my life and my career to an unfailing reliance upon this creed.

It can be found in his magazine, March 1922.

My Imaginary Council

Napoleon Hill taught you about assembling an imaginary council. You created one in 2002. Here it is today.

You convene these meetings in a log cabin that sits on a lake in Maine. Sometimes, Jesus, Nap, Bill and yourself ride up on big Harley Davidson motorcycles. Although you frown upon it, Jesus wears sandals when riding.

St Therese: The Little Way

St. Therese has been an important part of your life David. She entered your Grandma Rothacker's life when her oldest son Rollin, was in Japan during WWII. She prayed that he would be safe. In December of that year she entered the May Company Dept store in Cleveland, Ohio and rose petals were strewn across the door way.

She prayed again for your Dad when he was in Korea, fighting in the Conflict. While in Korea, Gil visited a shrine. There he saw a rosebush with one rose. He picked it, pressed it and sent it to your Grandma.

The day after your Grandma passed in 1962, your family revisited her grave site to pick up some of the flowers. All were cleared away however, except one rose stem with five flowers on it, the exact number of people in your family.

You moved to Fla in 2005, confident that you would land a general manager role for a quality air conditioning company in short time. You were wrong, but you continued to pray to Therese. You were forced to lower your standard to a B-type company. Still nothing. You were acutely aware of the utter incredulousness of your efforts. On the very last day prior to the onset of a serious financial crisis, a company offered you a position.

That night, you and Rosemary went out to dinner at a small Italian restaurant in New Tampa to celebrate. Once you sat down you slowly looked around. There were roses all over this restaurant. There were bouquets on a divider wall, there were individual roses draped on the corner of pictures and inserted within the wine racks. It was overwhelming.

Therese is on your imaginary council and is one of your closest confidants. She will be watching over your dad today at Hillcrest Hospital...no matter what the outcome of his surgery is.

This is your favorite picture of Therese. If you look closely at her left shoulder you will see her sister Celine's hand. There are more clear pictures of this shot, it was suggested that you use this one.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,                    
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

By Robert Frost

I've always believed that my destiny lie down the road less traveled and that these words by Robert Frost were meant as a personal road map for my Journey.

Today marks the creation of a new category here titled The Way. Although I share these words with those who would read them, they are dialog from my spiritual guide to myself and a documentary of my travels along the Road. I hope they shed light on that which is ahead as well.

It was a combination of this poem, my Road and Journey journals and my love of the Wizard of Oz that prompted the creation of my personal mantra: Oz is the Yellow Brick Road.