The Wonder of Wanders

I have thoughts, honest, but can't seem to mashall them - so I'll just share this quotation, which I found in a box downstairs. I put it together with a photo of myself on a bicycle on an off-road trail and kept it on my desk when I was a respectable person with my own office. I can't believe I'd forgotten about it.

"[T]here is no highway from infancy to maturity. It's all country roads with detours, dead ends, even places where we have to scout our own trail across untrodden country. The journey of human life and growth is an adventure, not an easy and predictable commute.

And there are places, of course, where we wander quite off the trail because we aren't paying attention or even run off in pursuit of something that, deep down, we already know is a mistake. The amazing thing is that even those mistakes become part of our path. As we emerge from our floundering in the brush, our wandering in the forest, and find a new sense of direction, we discover that we have not merely left our off-road adventure behind. Instead it has become part of us in unexpected ways. It has given us new insight, new courage, new humility, new life."

Oh how I wish I had written that, but it was L. William Countryman in his book Forgiven and Forgiving. Like any writer I'm tempted to add commentary, but, paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt, I would only mar it. It speaks for itself.