Living On The Edge
/This was first published in March 2004. I'm proud to say that it still fits.
“I have been tiptoeing across the edge lately and I’m feeling very brave about it,” I said.
“You don’t tiptoe,” said Cyndi. “I’ve never seen you tiptoe. You don’t even dance on your toes.”
“What I mean is that I have been treading lightly into the unknown,” I said.
Cyndi is seldom convinced by mere talk when I talk about making changes in my life. For some reason she has it in her head that I don’t make changes and all I want to do is the same thing I did yesterday, the same old things day after day. “Can you give me an example?” she asked.
“Well, one day last week I changed my running route. I cut a tangent across Kelly Park instead of following the sidewalk all the way around.”
“That isn’t adventure. You were just taking a short cut home.”
“Ok, maybe that wasn’t a good example. But I’m telling you I am learning to be a man of adventure. Just yesterday when I taught my men’s class I used completely different paper to prepare my lesson,” I said. “Completely different!”
“Was it yellow paper?”
“Yes.”
“Did you use a blue pen to write your points and a red pen to write your questions?”
“Yes.”
“So, what was so completely different?”
“The paper didn’t have any lines on it. I was writing freely across the page without guidelines.”
“Ooh – no lines. A donkey on the edge! How did you control yourself without lines?”
“I didn’t. I wrote all over the page with reckless abandon. I didn’t even worry about keeping my lines perpendicular with the paper. I was a wild man.”
“Ok, that is pretty wild for someone like you. Anything else?”
“Just last weekend I went backpacking into the wilderness all by myself. I was really out beyond the edge on that one. And there was snow on the trail! It was just me and the wild scary world.”
“How far away from your Jeep did you hike?”
“Well, a couple of miles at least.”
“And how many nights?”
“One.”
“And didn’t you take your cell phone?”
“Well, yes, but most of the time I didn’t have a good signal.”
“Ok, no signal sounds very edgy to me,” Cyndi said. “Anything else?”
“In my new office, I feng shui-ed my office.”
“Feng shui? You’re telling me you replaced ritual with reason using the ancient tradition of feng shui as a tool for creating harmony, good health, wealth, and peace of mind?”
“Mostly I put the couch at an angle instead of up against the wall. It was very exciting, by the way. I’ve never arranged furniture at an angle before,” I said.
“Did you draw a room plan on graph paper before you started arranging furniture, or did you just move furniture around allowing your heart tell you where it should go?”
“I used graph paper. I’m not crazy; I’m just adventurous.”
“Have your new office buddies noticed your radical furniture placement?
“I’m sure they’ve noticed it, but no one has said anything to me because they are embarrassed at their own conventional wall-hugging furniture,” I said. “They just avert their eyes and pretend not to notice. I am sure I can see envy in their gait.”
I could tell I was about to lose Cyndi’s interest even though she is usually enraptured by stories of my adventures. Sometimes she acts bored just to throw me off guard so she won’t give away what she is thinking.
“And I will give you another example,” I said. “I bought a new notebook to keep my phone log and meeting messages.”
“Where is the adventure in that?”
“That’s the best part. I bought a notebook with all blank pages. No lines.”
“O Berry, stop. You are killing me with all this crazy talk. Next you’ll tell me your new notebook is spiral bound.”
“That’s right. My new notebook is spiral bound.”
Cyndi jumped across the room and wrapped her arms around my neck and said, “Berry, I love you. You really are a pirate. You are so wild.”
"You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You." … Augustine
