The obstacles you face are mental barriers which can be be broken by adopting a positive approach – Clarence Blasier, author

Another weekend gone. We always judge time by events and this weekend will be marked by the end of our children’s basketball season and the rained out beginning to our son’s baseball season.  Somehow I was able to miss the rain and get in a few runs to push me past the 250 mile mark this year.  Even tonight as I ran I started to feel the drops as I raced down the straightaway of Lake St. back to my home.  Once again I felt a new power in my legs tonight and broke through some new personal bests. 

But it wasn’t my own personal bests that I was concerned with as I ran tonight.  Once again it was my wife’s personal best.  One week away from her next surgery and she’s working hard, being a great mother and talking about all kinds of things she wants to do next weekend, this summer and the rest of the year.  Her concerns aren’t about herself but about others.  Mind you I do my running to work on my own health.  I don’t have a weight issue but like many men my age I have cholesterol issues that are a combination of stress, diet and non-exercise.  I’ve dealt with this for 20 years now and know how to control it but my numbers always fluctuate when I don’t take care of myself.  My wife knows this and has made me promise to get a full work-up at my next physical next month  (yes I may join the many on cholesterol drugs this time next month).  As I ran through the last raindrops her thoughts and dreams reminded me of how she hadn’t taken her eye off of her hopes despite the many health issues she is still facing.  Maybe it isn’t how we remember our life by events, but by our dreams.

Weekends are still the time these days when we can catch up with each other and remember to tell each other the many things such as who is not coming back next year to our school, who is sick and having surgery, etc.  It was sad to hear that the economy is having an effect on the make-up of the classroom at our children’s school.  Friends and families are having to move.  Another set of friends from our our children’s nursery school days are having to move to Dallas.  This is tough on my wife because the mom is a god friend and was very helpful during my wife’s battle with cancer.  Our children are of similar ages and both women are from New Jersey so they often talk about raising their chidren in Northern California and the diferences from the area they grew up in.  I look at my children and they have no idea of the magnitude of the changing world around them.  They do occasionally pick it up in the morning when I read the newspaper or the morning  and ask a few questions and about how it pertains to them, but I try not to get too deep and have them worry.

Before my wife went to sleep tonight we checked our schedules and she reminded me of potential lunch plans with some out of  visitors who are visiting their oncologist this week.  It is interesting how the Web works these days.  You can meet people online and create some pretty good friendships.  One of my better friends in life I met just 16 years ago when discussing online about the death of a fireman who was a mutual friend in an accident that was a well publicized tragedy.  It just happened that the next week I was at the funeral, we met and became fast friends.  To this day we still communicate via email a couple times a week and have probably only seen each other 3-4 times since that day we met.  So maybe my wife will be able to maintain her friendships through correspondence.

I guess guys are more that way than women.  I have maintained strong friendships since my younger days.  The many events we shared together are memories that bind us.  Sharing success with my best friend Dave has bound us together for life and it doesn’t take much to get us together even if we haven’t talked to each other for a while.  You can still walk up to Dave and ask him about our favorite personal sporting triumphs together and he’ll tell you it was a  basketball game  against Marin Academy when we were in high school and he and I had a sort of mental telepathy that day in which we were on fire and scored at will.  There are many stories like that and they bring a smile to our faces. 

I hope my children are able to build these kinds of friendships in their lives.  Long-lasting ones which start early in their lives.  They start when there is such an innocent purpose as to why they become friends with someone and their bond becomes a fabric of events which are tightly woven.  Dreams happen much in the same way.  They are created innocently until they become an obsession and something they expect in life.  I hope they dream big and never let them go.

Which goes back to living your life by dreams and keeping time by those dreams.  I always dreamed of having a job I’d love to go to everyday.  I dreamed of playing golf in exotic and beautiful places , I dreamed of having a big party with all my friends and making them happy.  I still dream some of those dreams and more importantly I have friends to share in them.  Donald Wilhelm wrote in his book that he needed to get rid of the negative people in his life to move on.  I had to come to grips with some of that these past few weeks.  It doesn’t mean that they can’t be my friend or that being negative or down is wrong.  It is that when you dream, you don’t need the people closest to you shooting down your dreams.  It is all that most of us hold onto.  So if any of you out there are having a bad day, just make sure you don’t drg the ones you love down with you.