Page 25 - Vol. VI #2

traits that we all share. Perhaps, we all want to
be important. Perhaps, we all want to feel impor- tant. Yet we are unique—if we had to list, in order of importance, from most to least, one hundred things, ideas, or values, I doubt if any two people in the world would produce identical lists.
important to me. My thoughts were not on the beautiful day, but on so-called practical matters. Half dozing, I daydreamed of being a better sales- man, making more money, getting more out of life. Then something happened that made me see a bigger picture.
I can feel important if I can think of thoughts or ideas that no one has thought of before (by this
I mean what I and a lot of other people consider a substantial thought—not silly thoughts like “Would George Washington have become Presi- dent if he had had Rudolph the Reindeer’s bright and shiny nose?”).
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My journey to feel important is made more dif- ficult by the fact that hundreds of millions of
There was something soothing about the buzz of the power mower as he maneuvered it around the half-acre side yard. It helped him forget his righ- teous indignation. That morning the librarian had told him he could not get a book from the adult sec- tion—she had called him a boy. The buzz drowned out another buzz, one that was not soothing, but ominous.
It wasn’t that the boy was a budding young pervert —he just wanted to do a good job of replacing Rick. Of course, Rick could not be replaced.
“What I write here is about
the power of thought.”
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The boy lived in a black-and-white world—a world of black-and-white TVs, of black and white people, of black-and-white rules.
thoughts are created every second. A thought would have to be weird or strange to have a chance at being unique. A thought could, however, be almost completely false or based on facts that are not true and still qualify if it contained a small kernel of truth.
I was sitting on my son’s patio one warm spring afternoon. The floor of the patio was concrete. The sides were open to the outdoors. Wooden columns supported wooden beams that made up the ceiling. The ceiling was designed to protect one from the sun, but there was space between the beams open to the sky. All the wood, whether column or beam, was unpainted and weathered gray. This wood was important to our local neigh- borhood wood bees.
Don’t feel guilty if you learn something new about bees. My hope, however, is that you see something that no one ever recognized before, something about the way we think.
Wood bees, also known as carpenter bees, are common in our area. For a couple of reasons, many people consider them pests, to be poisoned or killed in other ways.
We are all grains of sand on a vast, lonely beach. Listen closely. Every grain is screaming. Desper- ately screaming “Notice Me.”
First, the wood bee looks like a bumble bee, which can sting. The wood bee, especially the male wood bee, is very aggressive. Although he cannot sting, no human likes to have an angry bee buzzing
I was sitting on my son’s patio one warm spring afternoon. This was a time when selling was
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