Posts by Allan Lacoste

Sometimes the hobbies that we love come with a price. To those who collect stamps or comic books, or enjoy car shows and theatre, chances are high that you can venture off to do these things without any serious risk of harm or injury. However, that’s not the case for all folks and their hobbies. Some individuals enjoy skydiving, bungee jumping, parkour, dirt biking, and other extreme activities. Unfortunately, these high-risk activities oftentimes come with high-risk injuries. Even so, is that any reason to give them up or not do them at all? Of course not. If you love something, you’re going to try everything in your power to do it, right? Wounds heal, bones mend and each scar tells a story about a person doing something they love so much, that they’re willing to risk their own well-being to take part in it. Each broken bone and the time required to heal also provide a period of reflection. And even though injuries will happen, the experience we take away from it dictates whether or not they’ll happen again. Be responsible. Have fun. Stay safe and live the life you want, even if there’s a little danger looming on the horizon of a good time.

I think it’s safe to assume that everyone has scars. Some of us have physical scars, while others have mental ones, and of course, a lot of us have both. No matter whether the scars are on your skin or your past, they all tell stories. They are memories of times when we did something stupid, or something fun that came with a price. They may hold the stories of bad times in our lives when we needed to prevail in order to grow. They can be fun or troubling. They take us back to our childhood, to our teenage years when we were too young to care and not old enough to know better. No matter how you look at it just remember that to have a scar means that you experienced pain, but also healed from it. We’re all scarred and we all have our stories. A smart man once said that out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. As it turns out, they’re just another kind of memory.

They say superheroes aren’t real, but if that were true, how do you explain the supernatural abilities that dads possess? I say “dad” because anyone can be a father, but only a select special few can be called a dad. So, what is it that makes dear old dad so spectacular? For starters, they’re able to whisk the pain away from nearly any small scrape or bruise with nothing more than a hug, kiss, and some supportive words. As children grow up and turn into teenagers, they start to get a real taste of the real world, and when that real world brings a bunch of stress to the doorstep. However, that stress isn’t a match for a simple conversation with dear old dad as it can be just the trick to make everything ok. Being a dad never stops, even as kids grow into adults, the advice bestowed on us from our dads is always insightful. And long after our dads have moved on past the great rainbow bridge, the wisdom passed down is worth its weight in gold.

When thinking about time, what constitutes being long? Ask a child and you may get answers such as “a few minutes” or “an hour”. The older we get, those reflections turn into days and weeks, and by the time we’re adults, it transitions to months and years. But in the grand scheme of creation, decades and centuries fail to leave even the slightest notch on the proverbial bedpost. Standing in a meadow full of flowers time seems to stand still, and in reality, we don’t even realize we’re staring at the root of our very existence. The floral display in the field stands as beautiful for but a small time, but their lives serve a greater purpose. As the flowers give way to life by reproducing and ensuring the survival of the animals and insects that depend on them, we are responsible for the same regarding our planet. Does everyone notice every flower? Perhaps not, but they notice the breathtaking effects it has on the nature around us. Will the future remember every person? Perhaps not, but they can enjoy the world that we took the time to nurture so they can experience it too. At the end of the day, at the end of time, we’re all just flowers in a breeze.

Frustration happens. It’s part of being human. The morning, each afternoon, during the evening, and every night are all times when these feelings creep upon us. Rejection. Disappointment. One can drive themselves crazy, even behave irritably, while cowering to the stresses that tower before us. Many self-defeating reactions alienate and nullify positives in life and bring out the worst in people. Or we can transform frustration with patience. And master it. Patience doesn’t mean passivity or resignation, but it does mean power. Patience is an emotionally freeing practice of waiting, watching, and knowing when to act. Being instinctual while being intelligent. Calculating. Patience is a form of compassion, a re-attuning to intuition, a way to emotionally redeem oneself when one becomes lost in a world filled with frustration. To frustrate means to obstruct or make it ineffectual. Frustration is a feeling of agitation and intolerance triggered when arriving at a lacking need. It’s an inability to delay gratification. Without patience, we are our own worst taskmasters. But with patience, we can step back and refocus ourselves. Patience gives us the liberating breath that reminds us of our mental freedoms. Our physical limits. To be fully alive we must not become slaves to frustration, but masters of patience.