Wednesday, May 7, 2014

All Aboard!

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Front: Christopher Rear: Nico enjoying a ride in the Engine of a train

May 7th, 2014



I stopped myself from looking into my future, two years ago, after my wife, Mimie, died. I just focus on whatever is occurring in my current moment as I make up my day while it unfolds before me. It’s as if the minutes and seconds of each day are barreling down a track of a runaway train.

My track is no longer laid out before me, on a pre-planned destination, I'm over that. Instead I lay my track before me as my life unfolds. I do this track laying at at a feverish pace since life is always fluid and dynamic but at least I can make on-the-spot decisions and change my future. It's the only way I can figure out on avoiding the misfortune that life seems to hand people. I feel this need not to plan on my future because I feel I can't count on where life is taking me. Ever since 2006 there have been major derailments on what I thought my train was headed on a pre-planned track that had all it's future destinations in front of me.

Stop 1: A career

Stop 2: Find love

Stop 3: Have kids

Stop 4: Live a fruitful life!

Talk about a defunct railroad system. My future path does't even seem worth Monopoly's Reading Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad, B & O Railroad and Short Line Railroad combined!

I don’t need a map to show me where this track is supposed to be laid anymore because that future rail line has been destroyed by life before the age of 40. I don't even know where the hell I'm headed because I ignore all the rail signs along my travels. I’m making up my next move, as my path extends out in front of me, as I keep on moving along those steel rails. It’s sad I have chosen to live life with uncertainly,  but I would rather control my own destiny as it is occurring, in the moment, rather than a further plan, that seems to derail anytime I place any planning into it.

The hard part, I found, of trying to carefully lay my tracks with in my minutes and hours is that I'm finding out no matter how careful I am with that placement, it seems that I can’t avoid trouble, or even heartache, no matter where I selectively set my path. I'm finding out that even by living by the seat of my pants I can't control my future. There is trouble in all of our lives and it comes out of nowhere.

My unfortunate events, that continue to happen, are causing me to realize that as hard as I try to forget about my future, the very tracks of my past that I'm doing my best to avoid are still there haunting me because I haven't learned that there is a future beyond this day.

Trouble and heartache is how us humans test our inner ability to overcome adversity and where we find our strength. At least I like to think that's where my strength comes from, because damn it, lord knows I have had more than my fair share of loss and heartache. Most of us have. Even the rich and powerful. Do I just forget I have a future?

Why when we’re at are lowest in life our woes, not only make us selfish, but narcissistic to feel that we are the only ones who are going through any type of problems? So we find that it is better to isolate ourselves from other people's burdens rather than seek out people who can help us. And we will contact people on our rail road tracks of life.

Not even trains travel a track solo. There are other cars on their ride through life tied in with that big engine. And those cars have people inside them, from all walks of life. Those people are riding those very tracks through the same life I'm living and yet I do my best to avoid them.  All those people surely some of them have their own complications from a bad hand that life has dealt them. Some, if not most, problems can test anyones will to survive heartache and make us human beings question, "Where is God? Why is he derailing me? Does God hate my metaphoric trains?

I love a train. They fascinate me. Large steal rising 15 feet in the air. Sleek lines forming the body. Sheer power barreling down an open rail line. The train horn blast waking up people for miles around. A train engine is a very powerful presence. That engine, it's pretense, the power, well, that is me.

Those train cars we fill, well, that is the life we decided to fill because someone or something gave us promise.

The hard fact is that those cars of life, we fill, will keep moving with or without my engine. My heart and soul keeps it filled with energy so it continues moving down my track. My heart has to be strong on this train throughout life to allow myself to succeed and heal and move forward. Being negative about how I move through my life isn’t going to help me when I arrive to my next stop. And lets face it. My train is moving to the next stop.

Because no matter what happens today there is still life tomorrow and I can either choose to arrive full heartedly to my destination with an open mind and take hold of a new opportunity. Or waste all my time and energy kicking and screaming, while I get there anyway. Leaving myself with no motivation to accept that a new day and a new destination has come because I failed to prepare for it due to my stubbornness to live and play in the minuets of a day rather than a plan of a lifetime.

But that train will move again on to the next stop. And I can either learn from my past or stand alone at the station while others carry on without me. I have to look onward as a new day presents itself and what the previous travels have led me to feel inside. And from this point forward, I can look on towards my new destination with optimism. I just have to train myself once again to look beyond these people laying that track in front of me and peer into my future already laid before me.


I decide where this train of life goes and here that track is laid.

Stop 1: For my future.

I can’t plan on a minute by second, whim anymore. I must look into the sunset as the tracks shimmer in the blazing sun. I should appreciate that my train has wide-open space of unfettered life, my life, to pursue and live whatever my heart desires. This new confidence will be okay because I trust myself, as the train conductor, to proceed on this track of uncertainty. I realize that just because I lay those future tracks already in front of me I can still reenforce myself with wood and steal.

Stop 2:

The framework of life’s work is in progress. It shall lead me into a better tomorrow. All Aboard the train of life! Don’t hesitate.

Your life is waiting too.


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