Miles to Go
by Tommy Bird

I believe love conquers all, not with a flash and a crash, but through slow, firm, unyielding pressure. I believe no person ever approaches perfection but must seek it as an ideal. There is a passage in the Koran that states, “A baby is born into this world, angry hands clenched, crying and wanting everything. An old man leaves this world with his hands open, wanting nothing.”

I believe the search that beings when we are born until the time we die, prepares us for the next world, or level of existence, call it what you may. No man or woman knows what happens after we die or where we go. However, we should look forward to that time, preparing ourselves by whatever means we have, no matter who our beliefs, “just in case.”

I believe the true miracles of this life are not flashy, showy events splashed out over an azure sky for all mere mortals to watch with wonder and awe. What purpose do they serve? Instead, I believe in the miracle of true friendship, trusting, giving, ever ready to help, no matter what the task. I believe in that kind of love, by its very uniqueness, rewards the giver with much more than he or she gave in the first place. I believe the love of a parent for a child is much more a miracle than a Being who writes on stone that only one man ever witnessed.

I believe in the miracle of forgiveness. For what greater miracle can you imagine than the man or woman who has the ability to look a persecutor in the eye and say, “I forgive you?”

I believe in giggles and belly laughs and rip snorting guffaws and har hars so intense they make a person giggle all over, rather than merely smile politely. I believe in the ridiculous and the sublime beauty of a person when he dives through a barbed wire fence to escape a raging and snorting bull as he leaves the seat of his pants hanging on the fence, snagged by a bard. Such small and mundane occurrences have the power to create grins, cause laughter and bring the tyrants of this nation to their knees.

I believe in the power of the eloquent message the soft smiles and gentle kisses lovers bestow on one another as they say, “I love you,” without uttering a word. I believe love conquers all things and softens the hardest heart.

I believe I have miles to go before I sleep.


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