James Lee Stanley

Please forgive me being so remiss in my  datamusicata responsibilities.   I have been very much involved in my father’s death and reviewing my own life and nothing seemed very important compared to that.

So that’s what I want to talk about today.   What we do with what we have.   I was thinking a lot about life and what it’s for; what it’s worth; what are our responsibilities, opportunities, etc, and  I came to the idea that when you get here you are this empty vessel.

You have whatever gifts came with your dna line up and you have the experience of whatever life situation you woke up into and then it’s all up to you.

You have to decide what you are going to fill this empty vessel with and then figure out how to do that.   Most of us, don’t think about anything, we just roll along following the path of least resistance.   Even the most gifted person usually does this, because their gift presents to them the path of least resistance.

Some people fill their lives with family.   They make babies, they nurture them and help them grow into the next generation and then they nurture their grand children and if they are lucky and healthy, they nurturne their great grandchildren.   Their family is their life.

Some folks make no babies and throw themselves into their careers, striving relentlessly to get to the top of the heap; or striving to amass a fortune.  

For me, it was learning my craft; getting better and better at playing my guitar; performing; singing; songwriting; I work hard at them all.   And I do this to the exclusion of a large family.  I am lucky enough to have a great wife, who has her own career and agenda and we have each other.   My song and my albums and my performances have become my children, I guess.

But the point here is that you start out with this empty vessel that is you and whether you want to believe it or not, you choose what you are going to put into that vessel, that container of all your knowledge memory and gifts.

What your life becomes is made up of the stuff you chose to put into that container.    You put revenge in there then that is what you carry around and what informs everything else inside of you.  Everything you put in there becomes part of who you are.  

So I’m asking you, what are you putting inside that vessel?  What are you putting inside of you?

And as you think about what you have or might put in there, don’t forget the part about everything that you put in that vessels becomes a part of you.   That old adage about “you reap what you sow”   is unbelievably resonant.  

I’m thinking it over and I’m trying to choose wisely.   Looking over my trove of stuff and deciding what I really want to keep and what I don’t want inside of me; what I don’t want to inform who, how and what I am.  This has been a very reflective time for me.   Sometimes I wish that I had done this reflection decades ago, other times I think that whatever I did, it al contributed to who I am now.

I hope we all choose wisely, because we really don’t have as long as we think we do.