Why Be Good When Your Best Isn't Good Enough?

So Far, So Good! was the title of Bryan Adam's greatest hits cd from 1993. It was also the first cd I bought when I purchased my cd player from HiFi Express that same year just after I graduated from High School (K if you need the math I'm 32 OK!). Since then I've purchased and parted with thousands of cds - I love music. But that isn't what I've decided to talk about; I'm really interested in the earlier music, the stuff I got on cassette tape in the transition years between records and cd's. In 3 shoe boxes and 1 cassette case I held all of my tapes. Meatloaf's comeback release with the song "I Would Do Anything for Love" or "Objects in the Rearview Mirror"; Van Halen's For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album (yes, being the naive kid I was missed the acronym sitting before me); Warrant; Damn Yankees; Scorpions; ACDC. The list goes on; each tape had its own memory and each song a specific historical event somewhere in my life.

How do we deal with our history? I mean each of us has a soundtrack running through our skulls of particular music, events, and even world happenings. Still the world turns and we must move on. Why do I bring this up? As I have alluded to in earlier articles I am cleaning up my life through simplification. Though I tend to face life head on I've been finding how much I haven't been dealing with, areas where I just let stuff sit there and gain dust (quite literally if you were to look in some of these boxes). In some ways I've been facing feelings of being a coward, a failure, inept; however, as I've faced these feelings straight on I've found something a bit different.

Because of OTHER faults such as busyness (especially stress from busyness), being overly compassionate (I still ask IS there such a thing), living in the moment, etc I have allowed not dust to collect on my life, but treasures. These treasures are the consequences of the life I`ve choses to live thus far. "For where your treasure is there your heart is also." There is a thought I haven`t been facing in this effort to simplify. I have been beating myself over every box, every item I put on the stack as I let go of my past. To be honest I have cried over some and smiled over others. I remember dancing to Thunderstruck and slow dancing to The Dance. I remember singing Christmas carols in my dad`s truck and rocking out to Bruce Springsteen . Dire Straits sings a song called Brothers in Arms about growing up from to old age and the greatest treasure we will have here on earth. Its not about what we collect or ends up in our boxes, but those who stand by us and help us in our day to day lives, and if we are lucky we get to help them too.