thinking out loud

My second weigh- in is coming up on Monday, Sept. 13 and I am thinking more about the future than ever before. At the rate I'm losing weight in seven months I will be a normal weight. Sounds incredible to write about the future when I had made my peace with moving on to the next world. Now, I have to readjust my thinking. At my beginning weight of 400lbs. my world was small and getting smaller. There is an inverse ratio of physical size and the size of the world a person lives in. There is so many things I couldn't do--such as going for long walks with my wife--even strolling down to beautiful Green Acre with my grandchild seemed like a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. Fears change. The world is suddenly quite large and more unknown than ever and the unknown generates fear. In this case the fears are welcome--embraced even. As life should be embraced. Life should be so vast that it becomes impossible to put your arms around and not the other way around. By that I mean life could not embrace me--could not get its arms around me. All this is not to say physical size is the only factor in creating a too small world. I have friends who suffer from severe depression that certainly shrinks the world they live in. I also work with individuals and interview individuals with disabilities and that can shrink your world. I have a memory of my friend Kathy coming to the radio station for an interview. Although we are on the first floor, the front entrance had about a two inch lip that was really difficult to get her electric wheel chair over. We strained to push the chair. I thought and still think about how at that moment the horizon of her world was two inches away--not somewhere faraway where the sky meets water or earth-- beautiful pristine line that separates two very different kinds of beauty. Kathy's horizon was a grimy strip of two inch high concrete--a formidable wall of a prison. So my prayer and hope for all my friends is that you walk your entire life around a beautiful mountain lake where the clouds come down for a swim on a warm summer afternoon and that this "sea of joy" be able to contain your reflection.