It is always encouraging to have an epiphany - a moment where something occurs to you that you haven’t thought of before. Most of us feel a bit brighter, a bit more encouraged, and a bit more enlightened after that pivotal moment of realization. We are driving along and - wham! - a thought occurs to us that seems as though it could change our world. Or we sit bolt upright in bed and come to a conclusion regarding an issue that has been on our mind for quite some time.

Mine seem to come at random times. And while some have been really solid, strong ideas (”I need to start working out again to feel better and watch my waistline.”), that doesn’t mean they are brilliant. Other times, my ideas have seemed brilliant and profound (”I know there are starving people in America and I must solve the problem right now!”) but not very realistic. Most all of us have these times - times when we realize we should make very good use of the ideas which have popped into our mind. And therein lies the key ingredient - we must take those momentary ideas and actually PUT THEM TO USE.

I have three action suggestions for each of us, myself included, which should help us make better use of our well-intentioned epiphanies. They are as follows:

1) Write them down.

As the old saying goes, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ It could be modified to say something along the lines like this, ‘the road to hell WOULD be paved with good intentions, if only I could remember what they are!’ And that is me personally. I have a great idea in the middle of the night, am convinced I will never forget it, only to wake up and never again remember what that great idea is.

2) Make a list.

I don’t know if it was watching Tom Dixon do it or listening to Todd Rodenberg talk about it that helped me more but we each need a list of our priorities. By prioritizing the most important of great ideas, the less important ones get put aside and therefore, I become more effective in accomplishing my tasks.

3) Lastly, conduct a mental check-up.

This isn’t a mental health exam. What this means is for us each to question whether our heart and mind are truly engaged in the project/thought/idea that came from the epiphany. Do I really want to move to Ethiopia? How do I feel about cleaning out the sewer system? Will my family appreciate the fact that I tattooed my head for charity? Exactly how will a vow of silence and prayer affect my career? These are just a few of the hypothetical questions we each should ask when examining our new-found goals.

While I am certainly not poking fun at anyone’s brilliant ideas, I am suggesting that epiphanies DO have real value… but only those which have been carefully examined. May we each examine our ideas, and then move forward with great courage! As always, I look forward to your thoughts!

Our obsession is everywhere. McDonald’s. Starbucks. Car-pool lanes. Debit cards and Pay-at-the-Pump. Online registration. TiVo and DVR. Texting, IM’ing, and Facebooking. Auto withdraws, ATMs, and drive-thru oil changes. We continue on with online renewals, online classes, and online banking. It gets worse with online schooling, camera patrolled intersections, and interactive video games. We love Ebay, Craigslist, and the classifieds, to name a few, and we get our news in 30 seconds from MSN, Yahoo, and People Weekly online. We are on Twitter and Myspace and blog for ourselves. The list could go on… and on… and on…. Period.

My confession of the month is that I’m guilty. I expect things done yesterday. I even found myself getting annoyed with the police officer recently for not writing my ticket quickly enough (the nerve of him wasting my valuable time!)! My fast food better be fast(!) and tasty(!) or I’ll be forced to throw a fit! And don’t even think about me having to stand in line at the “convenience” store - I’ll have none of it!

The moral of my story is quite simple: it isn’t worth it. It’s not worth giving in to our modern pace of life, only to have a heart attack and be regrettful. It isn’t worth my relationships, my health, and certainly not my limited sanity.

Our fast-food society is just that - on a fast-food pace. Assuming I can make my own decisions, and I believe I can, I would prefer to dine in. How about you?

No matter where you are in the world, you can find restaurants and other destinations that are known by most people the world over. The Hard Rock Cafes, the Great Wall of China, the Panama Canal, and the Golden Gate Bridge are just a few examples of famous destinations. There are also those destinations that are well known among locals, or well known by a smaller group because of their longevity. One such destination can be found on a two-lane state highway in southern Missouri.

Some distance between the small towns of Preston, Nemo, and Urbana, Missouri lies a small drive-in cafe called Mr. Ed’s. You can walk up to the window and order homemade fries, burgers, shakes, and so forth, or you can sit inside the very small seating area which seats maybe 10-15 people. Other than a small building right next to the drive-in, there is pasture on all four sides of the building. And when stepping out of the restroom which is located on the outside back of the building, you can literally see the Missouri hills for a few miles. The area where the employees make the delicious food is not much larger than the seating area, and I can’t imagine that the entire inside of the building is much more than about 1200 square feet. Amber and I had been in before, but this time I paid more attention to this small restaurant.

Although I don’t consider myself to be an especially sentimental or nostalgic person, something about this quaint little restaurant in the middle of nowhere led me to ask the gentleman behind the counter a few questions. I learned that it has been in that same location for almost 50 years and that, even though the time frames are similar, he did not believe the restaurant was named after the TV show which aired from 1961 through 1966. Surprisingly, he did not have or know of any written history on the restaurant, including the exact year it was built. He did know that the original couple who owned it had passed away and that it was now owned by another local couple who had purchased it a few years prior.

Eating establishments come and go, especially chain restaurants, and those in towns and cities are often bulldozed quickly when needed to make room for a new strip mall, hotel, etc. So any establishment which has made it half a century has truly seen some remarkable events. No doubt there have been many first dates at Mr. Ed’s; probably a marriage proposal during the last five decades, a breaking up, fistfights, a health scare or emergency, a baseball team’s victory, a meal before prom, a business lunch, and so on. All of these important life occasions, and the walls must observe without being able to record or say a single word. I can say with confidence that somewhere in America is an older couple (probably many), married several decades now, who can fondly recall several days of “courting” and sharing ice cream sundaes at Mr. Ed’s on a Friday or Saturday night many, many years ago.

When my wife and I took Colton in recently, none of that occurred to him. Like any three year old, he was just excited that they had french fries, hot dogs, and ice cream. Someday I will likely explain to him how many three year olds have been excited to sit in those booths and chomp on a hot dog. And just maybe at that time, the same thoughts will cross his mind. He may very well walk into a beautiful little restaurant in the middle of nowhere like Mr. Ed’s and wonder, “If these walls really could talk, I wonder what they would say?”

The politically correct would have you believe that there are no differences between men and women. Those who are honest would tell you that’s nonsense. Anyone who has been married, had children, or dealt much with the opposite sex in any way would tell you that men and women are inherently different in many ways.

It starts in the early years. Little boys are primarily interested in cars and trucks and little girls are primarily interested in dolls and kitchens. While not politically correct at all, it happens to be a statistical fact. There are many exceptions such as when little boys pick up their first doll and when little girls race their first car across the kitchen floor. But as the years pass, every young person eventually begins to identify with one sex or the other. And statistically speaking, most of those children end up identifying with the gender characteristics into which they were born.

I mention this because, as adults, we then must attempt to learn about the opposite sex and what drives and motivates them. In order to get along, we must learn to appreciate the fact that the opposite sex is very different from our own. And if we choose not to? Our relationships are strained and are hard for us to understand. We struggle to make sense of why getting along is difficult and why we are “misunderstood.”

Putting political correctness aside, men and women are born with differences. It’s ironic because we are trained to think differently, that we are all the same. Women are tough and men are gentle… and the list goes on. I’m not sure that I’m brave enough to mention the differences of the two opposite sexes, but I do know they exist. As soon as we can acknowledge that fact, we can start down the path toward better relationships.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

I had a very wild experience recently while driving to my office. I have had many bizarre events take place in my life and this one simply adds to the list. Here is what happened.

I got up on a Wednesday morning and, being behind schedule, looked to see what I could grab out of the fridge in a bit of a rush. There was a large container of grapes which had been there for more than a week. When I looked carefully, I could see that some of them had gone bad but most of them were still quite edible. So in my rush out the door, I took about half of the grapes with me for my breakfast. As I drove out of my neighborhood and onto a main road, I started to eat the grapes while driving. That’s when things got a bit nuts.

In heavy traffic while headed toward my office, I picked several of the bad grapes out of the bunch. I put my window down and pitched them out so that I could eat the good grapes without fear of putting a rotten one in my mouth. A few seconds later, I heard someone blaring on the horn and had to do a double-take when I realized it was a lady in a hybrid car next to me. Not only was she laying on her horn, but she put her passenger side window down (I was in the right-hand lane), was shaking her finger at me and swearing at me at the top of her lungs. All I could hear were words like, “litterer!” “environment!” “scumbag!” and so forth. Because A) she was laying on the horn and B) swearing at the top of her lungs and C) we were both driving and D) violence is illegal and not necessary, I really couldn’t do much but pick my jaw up from the seat of my vehicle. However, the story doesn’t end there. This was not a ten or twenty-second event. This behavior continued for a mile or two down this main road through town. Because traffic was heavy and I needed to stay on that road, I could not seem to get ahead of her or behind her much to avoid my punishment.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so scary. I realized that she thought I was literally throwing trash out the window, rather than fruit which of course is in no way littering. Many thoughts crossed my mind that morning, including the most important one: How often do I/we allow our blood pressure to boil over something that may be completely inaccurate? How often am I guilty of jumping to conclusions when what I have seen is not what really happened? And isn’t that why magic shows are so popular? More than likely, the magician didn’t really saw that poor woman in half… and you get the idea.

More importantly, she was rushing to a judgment about me without having the facts. We’ve all been there, and hopefully we learn with age. After all, we each have enough of our own issues to deal with. Which is why the Good Book summarizes it best, “Why are you worried about the speck in your brother’s eye when there is a log in yours?”

When in Wal-Mart recently, I stopped to ask the clerk where the sound machines were located. I explained to her that I had developed a snoring problem and needed to find a loud enough sound machine to create some heavy “white noise.” I am not joking one bit when she responded with, “What do you mean WHITE NOISE?!? Noise doesn’t have a color… I don’t know what you’re talking about!” And then looked at me with utter disgust. I asked her if she was kidding and quickly realized that she wasn’t at all. She was quite literally baffled as I thanked her and said I would look on my own. Ironically, the second employee wasn’t much better. “White noise? I’ve heard of that but can’t remember what it is. Isn’t that like the sounds of dolphins or something like that?” (Keep in mind these are adult women who have - presumably - graduated from high school.)

Then you have the equally sad other side of the spectrum. These are the folks who are either unbelievably brilliant or simply want you to believe they are. While the two are a bit hard to discern, the quality this group shares is that they want you to KNOW how intelligent they are. It matters not that there are billions of other bright people in the world; they are determined to show you just how much of a genius they are. Because intelligence and vocabulary are not necessarily correlated in any way, I usually enjoy a good laugh when I read an article where someone has intentionally inserted words which require a dictionary to look up the meaning. I know very little about him, and certainly don’t have anything against him personally, but an excellent example is Newsweek’s columnist George F. Will. Will loads each of his articles with huge words. And although they are not incredibly uncommon or hard to understand in the context of what he is writing, it’s humorous because Newsweek’s readership is not the elite academics of this world. Words like Uriah Heepism, Metternichian, apocryphal, luxuriates, forfend, meretricious, and cartelization are simply words that aren’t that commonly used, even among those who are educated formerly.

It seems as though Mr. Will (and those are just a few random examples of his) wants readers to know that he has a Harvard vocabulary. Nevermind that most of the world has not attended Harvard, and many of those who have still relate to their audience using everyday English. Sadly, I encounter those types on a regular basis who work diligently to build a facade or false pre-tense to suggest how brilliant they are and how much better they are than the rest of us. Maybe the strong desire to be seen as an elite intellectual is merely a defense mechanism for something else, such as low self-esteem? I don’t know but I do know I’m not comfortable around those who want me to know they were number one in their class at Oxford.

For most of us, it would be tough to pick which group we would rather be around, the “dumbed down” group of individuals who are so uncaring that they don’t spend the time to pick up on the most basic of terms (i.e. white noise) or those who want to discuss whether the “plethora of paradigm shifts is more qualitative or quantitative in nature when it comes to heuristic research.” I believe most of us would rather not spend the majority of our time with either group.

My hope is that we don’t become a nation where the majority lies in one of the two extremes with just a small percentage of us left in the middle. Because just like the completely uninformed group, the group of individuals who publicly proclaim their brilliance is equally out of touch with reality. And when the majority of a nation becomes out of touch with reality is when the real problems begin! As always, I look forward to your thoughts.

At first it was all fun. The fun quickly ended and the fear ensued shortly after.

It all started with Dustin saying, “Let’s all go hiking in Arkansas… it’ll be fun as long as you don’t have a fear of heights….” What he meant to say was, “You’ll only have fear if you value your life and want to raise your children.” He misled each and every one of us. And each of us threatened to wring his neck when we weren’t too busy screaming like little school girls. (See the “before” picture under the Bio section of this website. We looked happy, like we were going to have FUN. I am considering putting the “after” photo up so that readers can also see bruises, scrapes, torn clothing, twisted ankles and knees, and blood.)

You see we all do things in life that we really have no business - or very little business - attempting. These types of adventures are fun, but they are often times real tests of what we’re made of. Dustin is a young guy in my small group, somewhere in his mid twenties, and like the other guys in the group, he is fun to be around, trustworthy, and a guy you can or could count on when the chips are down. So when he suggested a small hiking trip, the other six of us quickly agreed. We range in age from early twenties, to late forties and are all in reasonably good shape. Or so I thought. And what better way to have bonding time than to spend the entire day away from civilization, hiking through the woods?

We all piled in one SUV a few Saturdays back, made sure our backpacks were stuffed with water and beef jerky, and off we took. When we stopped in Harrison, Arkansas, we made sure we had sandwiches and any other staples we needed for a day of “walking through the woods.” After passing through Jasper, Arkansas, and turning off the paved road, we all noticed we were going down a dirt and rock road that would not be possible without four-wheel drive. No worries, assured Dustin, this was just the road to the campground. And right he was. We got to the bottom of the mile-long dirt road and found many people camping, cooking out, and looking generally relaxed.

As the “hike” began, it was what we all were expecting. It was drizzling, so we knew to wear warm, water-resistant clothes. We started down a trail that was fairly easy to navigate and nothing too out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t long before we were crossing small streams and navigating our way over and around larger rocks (four feet by four feet). It was fun and we each realized within the first thirty minutes that we were going to get a good workout. Little did we know.

As the adventure became ever-more challenging, Dustin assured us that we were getting past the most difficult part of the hike and we would soon be back on a much easier trail. And about two hours in we came to what I would refer to as the “no turning back point” - although none of us knew it at the time. At this stage of our day we needed the help of a safety rope, as we each gingerly made our way up a twenty-foot precipice of sheer rock, followed by another 80-100 feet of dangerous climbing straight up. Since we had been climbing in elevation, we were now probably 250-300 feet above a rock bed, with absolutely no room for error. One wrong move by one of the seven men could literally get 2 or 3 others killed.

The situation became more and more serious as we made our way up muddy embankments with little to hold onto but a few random plants and roots. We worked together to climb over boulders that were two and three times taller than each of us. And several hours into our day, we each realized there was no turning back and no possible way for emergency services, no matter how serious things might have become (zero cell phone service on the most modern of phones and not one single way of contacting any other person). As the afternoon wore on, several realities hit home. Two of us (Dave and myself) were struggling on the climbs that were over 100 feet straight up and I wasn’t sure how many more of them I could physically do. And it was quite clear that we were not in a situation where we could just walk out. At this point, we were immersed in a few thousand acres of wilderness with steep ascents and descents all around us. And at the top of one of the final climbs, we also understood that we had no idea where we were. The trail had been long gone and we were in the middle of woods with only a couple hours of sunlight left.

While I realize my propensity toward the melodramatic, I also know when to keep that in check and recognize that sometimes a situation seems dramatic because it actually IS. So I was the first one to say, around the 4 o’clock hour while we were ALL wheezing heavily, that we probably should consider the fact that our predicament COULD get a lot more serious. If no one had heard from us by seven or eight, and we were navigating such treacherous terrain in the dark, we wouldn’t be laughing quite so hard. We had one compass and decided to head due north and stick with it, in hopes of finding a road, and to prevent walking in circles.

Fortunately, within a half hour, we accidently ran right into a real trail and followed it for the next couple of hours back to the campground. We were sore, bleeding, our adrenalin glands overworked, and exhausted. And… we had a blast. Dustin never wavered in his watching over us and the bonding we each experienced by literally helping each other through extremely dangerous situations helped bond us together for life. Seven men: Dustin, Dave, Chad, Wes, Garrett, Christopher, and Tyler, worked together to have an unforgettable experience. One that was a real test, and therefore a life-changing, unforgettable experience. May we each experience such tests a few times in our life.

I lost my grandfather George Colton last month after he had battled for over two decades with the horrible effects of diabetes. He was 82 years old and had struggled with intense pain, as well as other ailments too numerous to count, for well over 15 years. His body had been ravaged by the disease that is a slow, silent killer which literally affects all aspects of the afflicted person’s health. There is almost NO aspect of the afflicted person’s health which is not affected by this horrible, ravaging disease. While I already miss him, I had the great fortune of being well into adulthood and being able to have many years with a man who was a giant role model to me and countless others.

George was not someone who was rich, famous, or someone who desired to be either. He wasn’t well-known for wild behavior, bad habits, or a bad attitude. He did not want to sue anyone and, to the best of my knowledge, no one wanted to sue him. He didn’t drink booze, chase women, or wreck cars, even in his younger days. He never appeared on TV, ran a Fortune 500 company, or ran for political office. He wasn’t mad at anyone and, to the best of my knowledge, no one was mad at him. He didn’t make crude jokes, put other people down, or make fun of people who lived differently than him. He wasn’t perfect and didn’t know all the answers, but didn’t pretend to be either of those either. He wasn’t arrogant, ignorant, or a liar, and was wise enough to choose his words carefully.

My grandfather was a giant because he was the kind of man who lived life exactly as it should be lived - openly, honestly, bravely, with Christian love and compassion for others without selfish ambition or motivation, without thought of receiving praise and adulation, and without ulterior motive. My grandfather was in love with one woman (not including his daughers, granddaughters and the like): my grandmother, and had been happily married to her for over 62 years when he passed. While his disease affected his ability to feel well and he had been in constant pain for years, he never failed to tell all of our family how he loved her so much he would marry her all over again and not change a single thing.

I write this about him because the world sorely needs more giants like George Edward Colton. While no one is perfect, many of us know of someone who has lived life in such a way that we would be honored if someone said we were half the person they had been. I had the pleasure of telling him that I loved him and that he meant so much to me before he passed. May we each take a moment to tell the George Colton’s in our life what they mean to us and then may we honor that person by living the type of life we know they would have wanted us to live.

Along with football and basketball, wrestling was a popular sport in northern Missouri when I was in high school. And we were close enough to the Iowa line to know that it was an absolutely HUGE sport throughout that state. Any real wrestler who had a name had been from Iowa and my hometown was close enough for the influence to spill over significantly.

Although painful and difficult, wrestling was a fun sport because it raised our adrenaline levels so high. We were taught to work through the pain and that “pain was temporary but pride was forever!” I’ll never forget coach Doug Long’s stories of glory or his willingness to run mile after mile with us on country roads until we (sometimes) vomited or had to be dragged along by a teammate, so as not to be forced to run even further. We played Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and Queen’s ‘We Are the Champions’ as loud as the stereo system in the wrestling room would play. Each of us were forced to, quite literally, walk on our hands for the sake of balance, and lose pounds of fat as the season went on.

As trite as this might sound for any competitive sport, it is true that some very valuable life lessons are learned from such intense competition. Probably the lesson I remember most from my four years of wrestling was that there is one important factor separate from muscles, training, weight and coaching that you don’t know when you’re staring at the guy across from you on the wrestling mat: Desire. You have no idea how bad his desire to win is, and he also doesn’t know what you have inside you. Chutzpah. Guts. Willpower. Drive. Determination. All mean the same thing and cannot be measured. In short, it’s not just the size of the dog in the fight that matters; the size of the fight within the dog often matters more.

And how true that is in life when we face challenges. And as we get older and (ideally) mature as we age, we also realize which battles to save our energy for and which ones are worth letting go. Most of us have been there at least a few times before and we all will face seemingly insurmountable challenges at some point down the road. And when that important battle comes, the size of the dog in the fight won’t matter nearly as much as the size of the fight within the dog! As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.