jakorte's blog

Let me clarify. I’m not happy that we didn’t finish. I don’t like being cooped up in a vehicle with a bunch of sulky, tired volunteers with unspoken regrets – even if they are awesome people. It’s just too heavy for me. That's why I chose to drive leaving Aldersgate. I figured there wouldn’t be enough room in my weary brain for both driving and mulling.

There wasn’t much room in some other’s brains either. Out of a back passenger seat came an excited, probably over-caffeinated exclamation, “Look a deer!” Followed briefly by a pause, and a sadder voice, “Nope, it’s just a tractor.”

The further away we get from ourselves, and from our mirrors, the more likely we are to mistake what we see and what really is. We will remember the incompleteness vividly, allowing it to override what we did accomplish. Memories of finished larger projects and handled little tasks will fade away for us more quickly than the relatively small gap we left behind us.

You know how you have to angle a mirror to see the back of your head?
You know how it’s so much harder to comb down a stray piece of hair using one mirror to reflect into another?
It’s tempting to move in direct correlation to how the mirror tells us. Even though our experience and our brain tell us that is not how we will accomplish the task, we try it anyway. Only when it doesn’t work, when we’ve missed our target, do we stop and think, and try again. We move cleverly into using our stored knowledge to go forward. This time we do so without looking, relying on almost instinctive strokes. Then we more confidently recheck our work; using the mirror only to confirm our triumph.

This is how I want this team to remember Slidell:
We know more, we can do more, we are more confident, we are more seasoned, we have stored within us what we need.