Dancing with the Stars

This week at our activities center we learned how to pass the hand behind you while swinging with the swing. What a fun dance. People are always telling my wife and I that we look like dancing on the stars. It is amazing to get out and learn enough to be caught up in it. I know my Dad and Mother were both serious Jitterbug dancers. Someday I'd like to see a replay of all this.

Whatever you want to do -- go out and do it. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Success to me is in the doing -- not in the being successful. Anyone can be successful and then quit. It is the amazing people that are alive their whole life, not letting success or failure get in their way.

I was once told early in my life that my music was nothing and that they could do rings around anything I had ever written. Yea, I said, and what are you playing today? What are you writing today? The point to me is not to be rings around someone else -- I love to write and play music so it is real every day of my life. I enjoy it and it thrills me to be alive and producing music.

Dancing with the stars to me is not an achievement, it is a process through which I like to travel weekly. I watched my Father paint and even with a big brush he made painting after painting -- amazing. He wrote songs, he planted a garden, he got out in his free time to golf, play ball, visit the folks, visit the farm, visit the museums, play backyard badminton, and teach the neighborhood kids how to play guitar or harmonica. He seem to capture the essence of what I call humanity with those whom he came into contact.

I watched my Mother populate our house with projects and populate our basement with goods put away for the future. Her tireless work was amazing and she seemed to involve all of us with a passion for being prepared. She always makes a holiday a special event inside her own home. She is always looking for that next thing to do.

My parents split apart when I was young but they both remained faithful to this unconquerable spirit of doing. They both remarried and found partners who seemed to be on the same wonderful spin of life. To me they are the true spirit behind dancing with the stars.