As many of you know I do RideShare driving occasionally. Driving for Uber and Lyft gets me out of the house allowing me to meet some interesting people and provides a small stream of income that makes no specific demands on my schedule.

One of the most insidious things I see, regularly, are devastating crashes caused by distracted driving because of cell phones or texting. We’ve all seen it, the driver, weaving across the line, or running straight through a red light with a phone in his or her lap, texting away, oblivious of the traffic around. I’m frustrated because distracted driving often ends with a pile of twisted metal and fatal results. The bloody fatalities are often innocent and conscientious drivers, who are impacted by the selfish careless acts of another person.

The park bench was deserted as I sat down to read beneath the long, straggly branches of an old willow tree. Disillusioned by life with good reason to frown, for the world was intent on dragging me down.

And if that weren’t enough to ruin my day, a young boy out of breath approached me, all tired from play.

The process of shutting down has begun. It’s so hard to feel so helpless when someone you love has to go through a process like this.
I keep reminding myself that the struggle to enter the next life is not that different than the one to enter this one was. Only the perspective of us as spectators is different. . . 

I drove past this house recently in the back hills of Kentucky.  I stopped to ponder this home.  At some point in history, this was somebody’s dream.  Some young couple married, built a house and raised their beautiful children here.  The owner would have spent nights imagining how he would place the footings, how he would erect the walls, where he would place the windows.  He would have dreamed of the views out the dormer windows in the early morning before milking the cows.  He considered every nail, every board, and every shingle. . .

Interesting conversation with a gentleman camped next to us. . .

We happened to be chatting about our individual lives and what brought us to where we are in life. He worked 30+ years for a UAW (Union) plant in Michigan and his wife was a school teacher. They both retired with full pensions, social security, and insurance. The American dream – right?