Saturday, April 9, 2016

Everything Follows the Head

When I was a young sprout, I loved to dive. I learned to do a flip off the board in some State Park in North Carolina on a family vacation at about 8 years old. I was hooked. If I could determine the water was deep enough to dive, jump, or flip, I'd go over the side. Bridges over lakes, cliffs, diving platform were the best!

I didn't know it at the time, but the physics of flipping is written in stone...your body follows your head. I got cocky enough following my head to burst a few ear drums on a full twisting one and a half off the low board.

I was a swimmer on the UGA Swim Team. I've got the year book to prove it. When the other team didn't have a third diver, coach knew I could fall off the board and get a third for the team. A better showing than I usually got for swimming. Painful as hell off the 3 meter board, at times. Nice in the air, terrible entries.

Here lately, that same axiom, "everything follow the head"  has begun to run more of my life than I like. My head is telling me I don't need to be on that ladder with a blower, cleaning off the roof. It tells me that digging ditches is for younger backs. It'll stop me in the middle of the garden and tell me to go lay in the grass and look at the sky...this has never happened to me.

I spent most of my life not listening to my head. My Indian name is probably He Who Will Not Listen. Against better judgement, I usually followed the path less traveled or rewarding. I would start out with the best intentions, only to find myself wandering off somewhere to see what was over the next hill. Shoot, I could have been a hundredaire by now, if I'd played the game even badly!

What is it about the aging process that begins to wean you off the "work ethic". I don't have time to listen to my head tell me I need to slow down; that I should be smelling the flowers, instead of planting 'em. Hog wash! I'll tell you when it's time to smell 'em. I am having serious consultations with myself and seem to be following my head, and not my nose.

Makes one feel guilty as hell. My head is telling me my body doesn't need to take care of all 15 acres, just let nature take care of the rest...she's gonna' win in the end. That ain't what Pat and John Deere think.

My head counters with, "Aw Pat, just go have fun, play another tune, don't worry, be happy".

Maybe I start listening. Just out of three weeks of physical therapy. Sore back.

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