"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

--Wayne Dyer

I've always been attached to "things."  

Wheeeeewww...that felt good to admit. 

But not in an envious, stingy, greedy way. Keep reading. 

I think it began when I was four and I learned through a string of deaths in my family that nothing lasts.  No one lasts.  My best armchair psychologist explanation is that over the years growing up, I began to place too much importance on things, hoping they would last and that the people the things reminded me of would last.  Or live.  Or stay.  Andy Stanley would argue that my love of things is rooted in envy--the idea being that I feel like I owe myself things.  Who knows...(Shoulder shrug).  

Things have a way of making you feel special.  Remember when you got your first car?  Remember when you got your first NEW car??  Or maybe--because I'm a musician--when you got your first instrument?  Remember when you got your class ring?  Or your diploma?  Remember when you got your first house?  Remember when you got your first paycheck?  Remember when you got your first spouse?  Remember when you got your first really nice pair of shoes?  Or jacket?  Or cell phone?  Or computer? 

Remember how special you treated it? How you protected it? Perhaps to the point of it being too much?? 

My first car is probably in a scrap pile somewhere.  I've never owned a new car.  My first instrument MIGHT be in my mom's attic??  My class ring?  I never wear it.  It's not even real gold, and the stone is fake.  My diploma?  I don't know where it is.  My first house is now owned by a student of mine.  My first paycheck?  Spent.  My marriage ended.  My first nice pair of shoes?? Am I kidding myself right now??? My first cell phone? It was in a bag and got stolen out of my car in the AHS stadium parking lot.  My first computer?  Thrown away years ago.  The damn thing only has 64MB of RAM and had a 128 MB hard drive.  

Though those things all have gone by the wayside, the memories attached to them haven't.  And I think it is in this desire to preserve things, or moments, or people, that we begin to place too much value in things.  

They basically become idols.  

Today, I was out riding my motorcycle.  Somehow, this whole concept entered my mind, and I've been stuck on it since.  

I think we hold on the past because it's really the only thing we have. It's all we can look to and say "that was real. That happened!" And that's why we take photos. And put up statues of people. And leave Christmas trees up til August. Hey...I'm definitely gonna the first to have his tree up this year, for sure! 

But anyway.

Things are so often labeled idols and maybe they are. But to me they are reminders. They remind me that,  in a world where EVERY. SINGLE. THING. seems to change at the speed of light, there are some things that last. That stay. That live. Forever. 

And those are our memories. 

"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be 

prepared for changes."

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Years ago when I was in college, a friend of mine formally introduced me to the music of Stevie Nicks.  I'm sure I'd heard her many times playing on the radio, but I suspect I never really payed much attention to her.  I was more into new wave music and rap.  

Fast forward a few years from then, and I'm a new father, and on one particular occasion I was riding in the car with Grant and I heard "Landslide" on the radio.  In that weird way that only overthinking OCD types like me understand, my mind jumped forward into the future about 20 years, and I'm sitting there looking at my son in the rear view mirror thinking about how "I've been afraid of changin', 'cause I built my life around you."  The changing hadn't even happened yet, but I was absolutely certain of how it would feel.  And here I sit, in 2024, with three grown kids, and would you look at that!!--I was right about how it feel.  I suspect I'm not the only who's at least somewhat scared of change.  

A couple days ago, I was sitting on my bed getting ready for the day, and the thought occurred to me that you cannot possibly be adequately prepared for the changed that come.  I started thinking about all the times I've been caught off-guard by change.  Buckle up!!

Things for which you cannot possibly be prepared for when they happen.

1.  What it feels like the first time a cashier gives you the senior discount, especially if you aren't that old yet.  

2.  How quiet your house is when it's just you there.  

3.  That feeling you get when you realize that your birth year is just as close to 2024 as it is to 1921.  

4.  Having a conversation with your son and in his voice you hear full-on manhood.  

5.  The draw drop that occurs when you see your daughter dressed up in her prom dress.

6.  Seeing you parents deal with health problems you never thought you'd see.

7.  The knowing that one day will be the last day your kid sleeps in your house.

8.  The total unexpectedness with which your kids' high school graduations arrive.

9.  When you think about how much older you are now that your mom was when she went to her 20th high school reunion.  (And you thought she was OLD then!)

10.  When you hear students call 90s rock "classic."

11.  That weird feeling you get nowadays when you are gone somewhere and you just wanna go home, and how welcome that is!

12.  The simple joy that comes from your son being in your house, because he's lived in another state for four years.

13.  That unneeded feeling you get when you see your kids and students do so many things in an accomplished way.  

14.  Waking up and you're like "oh I guess that part of me hurts now."  

15.  Things like "I need reading glasses for the office AND the house" come out of your mouth. 

16.  You actually consider buying a different motorcycle because the one you have is a bit too fast.  Where. The. Actual. Heck. Did. That. Come. From.  

17.  How you can now sit at a coffee shop with your sister and brother in law and feel absolutely NO NEED whatsoever to get up and leave, to go check a box, to accomplish something today.  So not me!

That's enough. 

If you feel attacked, you might be going through some of the same changes.  If you're like me, your first instinct is to go to war with those feelings.  Because we're all 10 feet tall and bulletproof, right?  You might be.  

Richard Rohr says that our lives are in two parts.  In the first part we are building our vessel, as he calls it, and in the second part we are figuring out what is worth putting in that vessel.  We live both these parts in very different ways, and you can't be successful in the second part if you don't finish the first part.  If you haven't read his book Falling Upward, I highly recommend it.  

I find myself squarely in the second part of life, and if Richard Rohr is right, this is where life really and truly is found.  Instead of kicking against the pricks like Paul was doing in Acts, we have to submit to the change around us.  We can either swim upstream against a drowning exhausting current, or we can do with it.  It might even be better to say that we have to gently lean into it.  We have to brush up against the current without trying to completely stop it.  

I think the best way to look at it is like this.  

Look at that guy! He's OLD!!! Not really.  He's still 18.  Only his body is old.  

Live life, folks!! 

 "That event doesn't happen until tonight, so you must be very careful not to run into your other self."

--Dr. Emmett Brown, in Back to the Future

There is a reel going around Instagram and Facebook...in fact it has probably gone around multiple times.  I've seen it twice now, I think, the second time about 10 minutes before I started writing this blog post.  I don't know if it was the moment, or the mood I was in, or a combination of many other things (it was many other things), but I immediately felt like I needed to write this.  TL;DR....

The content of the reel is this:  the text says "your 18 year old self meets your 45 year old self, and asks if your life turned out the way you hoped."  It's edited to include a video graphic of some guy who's saying something like "awww man....kid, you don't wanna know." Or something to that effect. The whole thing is couched in the notion that no, life didn't turn out the way he'd hoped.  

First of all, can you imagine it even being possible to travel into the future??? I mean, O'Reilly Auto Parts does show a flux capacitor on their website, but that thing has been "out of stock" for year.  Losers.  Even if time travel were possible, which it isn't, but if it were, would you be willing to go into the future?  If you could meet your self 27 years into the future, would you want to know what your future self knows??  

When I was 18, I was a very balanced emerging adult--I had a chip on BOTH shoulders.  Life wasn't fair, I was fully aware of it, and I was damn sure gonna make sure I found out who was to blame for all that had "happened" to me.  I remember it well.  I was right.  Everyone else was wrong.  

I remember when I got the offer to be in the LBW Ensemble.  I felt like something has finally gone right in my life.  I still didn't have a clue what the future held, and I was scared to death of moving on past high school.  I didn't know what I wanted to major in.  I knew I was good at music.  I felt like I might like architecture.  As it turned out, music won out.  

This reel I mentioned got me thinking about how life "turns out."  I put that in quotes for a reason, which I'll try to get to in this post.  Wow, where to start.....?

How did life turn out?? Perhaps it's better to ask "how is it turning out?"  Here goes....

I never thought I'd be divorced more years now than how many years I was married.  

I never thought I'd become the successor to Jerry Padgett at LBWCC.  

I never thought I'd have the three amazing children that I have.  

I never thought I'd have a head full of gray hair.  

I never thought I'd have crossed the Pyrenees Mountains on foot, twice.  

I never thought I'd have formed the friendships that I formed by way of teaching the hornline at Southwind Drum and Bugle Corps for 6 years.  

I never thought I'd watch my son's high school years from a distance because he lives in another town with his mom and step dad.  

I never thought my kids would have a step dad.

I never thought I'd drop my son off to go to boot camp.  

I never thought I'd have thousands of photos of my kids and me doing fun things all over the country.

I never thought I'd lie awake nights wondering if my kids are OK when they aren't under the same roof as me.

I never thought I'd get to stand in the back of the room at watch my students light the place up as they perform music.

I never thought I would get to a point where I could look back and remember my favorite thing that ever came out of each of my kids' mouths.  

I never thought I'd get my stomach sliced open due to an inflamed gallbladder. 

I never thought I'd run a half-marathon or ride a century.  

I never thought I'd fly a helicopter.  

I never thought I'd have to take not one, but two blood pressure meds. 

I never thought I'd make it to 51.  Seriously.

This list could go on forever.  The truth is, life has turned out the way it turned out.  Whether it is good or bad is entirely my choice.  Victor Frankl's timeless book, Man's Search for Meaning, expounds on this concept--that we decide what is and isn't meaningful.  We decide what is good or bad.  We get to decide.  There are things in the list above that are "bad." There are also things that are pretty freaking epic!  But whether they are bad or good is entirely subjective, depending on who is looking at them.  

Is life perfect?  Nope.  Is it pretty darn amazing?  Yep.  So, to my 18 year old self, I say, "well, it all depends on what you thought life was gonna be."  But with the experience that only can come from having lived life, I'd say it's pretty grand!!  

 "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild 

and precious life?"

--Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

On Stanley Avenue, just south of town, sits Andalusia Cemetery.  I haven't counted, but I suspect there are upwards of 2000 graves in the place.  My grandparents and my father are buried there.  Ben Bates is 50 feet away.  My aunt and uncle Hilry and Abbie Ryland are just across the way. There are, no doubt, a hundred or so other people there that I know.  But that leaves almost 2000 people that I never knew.  And there are people buried there that no one alive knows or remembers.  That makes me pause.

Recently, my brother-in-law, Frank Shaffer, and I were engaged in deep conversation, and as conversations always do when the participants are middle-aged fathers who are struck right between having grown children and aging parents, the convo turned philosophical.  Frank said something along the lines of "isn't is just crazy to think that we are here for a little while, and then not many years after we die, there will likely be NO ONE alive who even remembers us?!? While this might seem sad and depressing to think about (go for a walk--it'll boost serotonin), it's actually a very empowering thought, if you view it in the right perspective.

If we truly and strongly grasp on to this truth--that we will be gone one day--then we begin to live differently.  We begin to live with a different sense of purpose that we perhaps lived with before we crossed over into this knowledge. Or, as Richard Rohr put it, while we're still building our vessel.  Once we are in Rohr's second stage of life, and we begin to FILL OUR VESSEL, we see everything differently.  And this ultimately leads us to wonder what our legacy will be.  

Legacy.  (I actually want to buy a Subaru Legacy, but that's a different story.)

How are going to be remembered?  What difference are we making with this "one wild and precious life?"  It reminds me of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "who tells our story?"  

Early this morning, my mother's cousin, Dwight Ryland, died.  He was 81.  He had two daughters, Anna and Stephanie, neither of whom I've seen in many years.  The significance of this death is that there are now only THREE male Rylands left in my family:  Dwight's older brother, Wayne, Wayne's son, Justin, and Justin's son, Caleb.  Unless Caleb has a son, the name ends there.  But does it really???  

I've been thinking about Andy Andrews' "Butterfly Effect."  As I am one who believes literally everything has significance, I loved that book.  I suggest you read it if you feel like you aren't making a difference in the world.  My great-grandparents Lon Ryland and Ida Martin Ryland had four kids:  my grandfather, Alton, two daughters, and another son, Hilry.  From that farm in rural Geneva County came so many amazing things. From them came my amazing mom, and her sister, my Aunt Laura.  From them came Thomas and Jeremie.  From them came my niece Lorren who sings like an angel and her brother Riley who loves music almost as much as me.  From them came my kids.  And from them came all the rest of my Ryland family.  From them came everything that all of us have ever done.  And will do in the future.  All because two people got married and had four children.  From them came Dwight's many drives from Thomasville, Georgia to Andalusia just so could feast on home-made biscuits.  My mom's really are the best on earth.  Just ask me--I'll tell you.  From Lon and Ida came more things than I can type today.  The point is that they do live on--after death--in the lives of those who came from them.  They are not forgotten.  And neither will I be forgotten.  And neither will you.  

It is not what you achieve that will make you be remembered--it is what you contribute to the world.  As Kevin Kline's character in The Emperor's Club said "conquest without contribution is without significance."  What a powerful thought.  Some of you will contribute art.  Or you might contribute compassionate children.  You might contribute a life of faith that affects those around you.  You might contribute to those who are alone.  You might be the cause of 6.02 x 10^23 smiles. You might contribute by making someone believe in him or herself.  You might contribute by easing the paths of those around you.  You might carry a burden that isn't really yours to bear.  And the real, capital-T truth is that you will likely not even know that you contributed to the world in the way you did.  

Your birthday has already been put on your headstone.  If you are reading this, your death date hasn't.  You're working on that little hyphen that goes between them.  "So, tell me, what is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Today's the 1st day of the rest of your life.  What's on tap??

 "Time, time, time--see what's become of me."

--Simon and Garfunkel

When I was in high school, Chick Earle helped coach the Andalusia High School baseball team.  One of my best friends, Zane Johnson, played on the team.  I remember he would say that Chick was known to yell "Time him, time him!"  It became a running joke with Zane and me.  It's been about 32 years, 7 months and 7 days since we graduated--but who's counting, ya know??--but I guarantee you if I saw Zane today, and I yelled "Time him, time him" he would laugh.  Baseball is so much about timing.  Chick probably knew that better than anyone I ever knew.

If you put a quarter note triplet in front of the average high school drumline, I would bet you a lot of money that they would play it like dotted eighth/sixteenth tied to eighth/eighth.  It's close but it's wrong.  The timing is wrong.  God forbid they have to play half-note triplets.  Right, 2019 Southwind hornline?? Helloooooooo! But I digress.  In music timing is absolutely crucial.  I have a book of orchestral excerpts for auditions, and in the preface notes, the compiler of the book actually said that very thing:  that rhythmic inaccuracy is the number one contributing factor in being passed over in an audition.  Timing matters!!!

I used to have a book called How We Decide.  The first chapter was about Tom Brady and his rise to football fame, beginning with his career at Michigan.  It was fascinating to read about just how fast he could make the decision to throw the ball to this or that receiver or to run it, or to do whatever else he might have done with the football.  (I guess that could include deflating the ball also.). When you look at the size of a regulation football field, and take into consideration just how fast professional athletes are, on both sides of the ball, it is obvious that timing matters.  

Time and timing seem to dictate so much of human existence.  We are obsessed with time.  Back to the Future, and its two sequels point this out in cinematic beauty, complete with amazing music that had to be timed perfectly for it to make sense.  At exactly the time the flux capacitor (part 121G at O'Reilly Auto Parts, by the way) kicked off at 88mph, that music climaxed and BOOM! Back to 1985 we go!  But what if the music and the film aren't in time?  Well...then the effect is lost.  You might not know that when you watch the opening credits for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the trumpet solo you hear Malcolm McNab play is actually take 17.  He played it 17 times perfectly, but the composer wasn't as a good a conductor as he was a composer, and on the first 16 tries he couldn't get the music to line up with the video on screen.  If you're Malcom McNab, it tends not matter, because he has never flubbed a note, ever.  

We've heard of being in the right place but the wrong time.  And we've also, unfortunately, known of instances of being in the wrong place and the wrong time. But what about when the timing of everything  is exactly right??  Well, that can produce some amazing results.  The thing about timing, though, is that you can't force it, and you can't always know that the right time is right.....now.  No, now!! Wait...now!!!! Dang it, I missed it!  NOW!!!  Now??  Uhh, ok...ok.....NOW!  Nah....that does't really work.  There are just some things you simply cannot know, until after the fact.  And perfect timing is one of them.  

My Favorite Things.

Remember that song in The Sound of Music?  The one where Maria lists off her favorite things in a cheesy bed-time display of ridiculous vocal and acting talent??  Yeah, that one...

I don't think this could be turned into a song, but I thought I'd write my own list.

These are a few of my favorite things....

1.  The sound of my children when they say "hey, dad."

2.  Salted caramel lattes made with heavy cream.

3.  Posting final grades at the end of the semester.

4.  Firewood that is cured perfectly.

5.  Honda motorcycles.

6.  The first day of fall semester.

7.  How the Chicago Symphony brass section sounded when Bud was still alive.

8.  Building things with my hands and my tools.

9.  Flagg Mountain.

10.  Homemade vanilla ice cream.

11.  Boat parades. Even if it's foggy.

12.  Jeep Wranglers.

13.  Watching The Ensemble shred.

14.  Being tacet on a piece of music so I can listen to my friends play amazing music.

15.  Spontaneous trips.

16.  Maverick and Ellie and Josie and Zeus and Beau and Dodger and Tucker and Oakley and all the dogs.

17.  Smartwool sock.

18.  LaSportiva shoes.

19.  Yamaha trumpets.

20.  My mom's homemade biscuits.

21.  Voces8.

22.  How my yard looks after I mow it.

23.  Robert Frost poetry.

24.  The look on a student's face when they finally get it.

25.  #BrassStaff

26.  Liriodendron tulipfera.

27.  Sunsets

28.  Liturgical music.

29.  November.

30.  Tritone suspensions.

31.  Having my kids all under one roof.

32.  Comfortable chairs.

33.  Hennessy hammocks.

34.  Barq's root beer

35.  Sunshine on a brisk fall day.

36.  Hiking.

37.  Road trips.

39.  St. George Island

40.  Duran Duran

There are a million other things.  I don't even know how I listed 40 things because I love so many things.  There is so much in the world to love if you see it properly.  

I was recently encouraged to resumer blogging, and so here I am.  And I love that, too.  

Have a great day!  

I used to….

"Things aren't what they used to be, and probably never were."

    --Will Rogers

Past tense verbs are dangerous.  (How's that for random??)

You know the kind I’m talking about…

I had.....

I went.....

I used to....

Quantum physics seems to suggest that we can go backwards and forwards in time, and that we can even be at multiple points in space-time simultaneously.  But I don't need quantum physics for that, as I am quite good at living in the already-happened past, or in the future that I have planned out in my wild, sleep-deprived imagination.  It's easy to get lost in thinking about the past--to go down the rabbit hole--and while it isn't necessarily bad to think about the past, I have to be careful.  It's not so much the thinking about the past that is problematic, as is HOW we think about it.  What we think about it.  The significance we give it.  

For most of my adult life, or at least the portion of my adult life in which I was conscious of such things, I have believed that people think about the past so much because we know it's the only thing we really "have."  It's the only "proof" that any of this life that we've created actually happened in the first place.  In the present moment, which alway seems to fly by at the speed of light right before our eyes, we are so pulled for attention that the "present" isn't even a real thing.  Your daughter is trying to show you what she made at school while your son is chasing the dog through the house while you are attempting to cook spaghetti before rushing off to Wednesday night Bible study, and you're already mentally exhausted from a long day at work.  It's like you're standing on the banks of a river watching the water flow by, non-stop, all day long for eternity.  All a parent wants to do in these situations is press pause on life and just stop time from passing.  Ask any parent whose last kid(s) is/are seniors in high school--they'll tell you this true.  

As for the future...well, the flux capacitor is still just a movie gimmick...a joke that is "currently out of stock" on the O'Reilly Auto Parts website.  (Part #121G, if you wanna check that out.) We can't go to the future yet.  Not sure I'd want to....I mean, have you seen Back tot he Future, Part 2????  No thanks.  We can dream about the future.  We even think we can plan for it, but even this is false because the future never really arrives because once it does, it immediately passes into the past.  

I taught my kids, and my students also, that you can't plan for the future--you can only plan a past to look back on. Make it a good past, because you are going to look back on it for years, and years, and years, and years.  No action taken taken is without consequence, and it just might be that the only consequence is you having to look back and wonder what would have happened if you'd decided differently, but there is always a consequence.

So, about this past of mine/yours....

We romanticize the crap out of it don't we??? 

"When I was in school..."

"Back when I was in the military..."

"Back when I was a priest..."

"Back when I was a teacher..."

We are absolutely convinced that the best days of our lives are BEHIND US.  And it is this mentality that scares the absolute living daylights out of me.  I mean, am I to believe that I've already done all the good that I'm ever going to do?? God forbid. Sadly, I must admit I'm the world champion of this kind of thinking, and I must change it.  I hate that I ever wasted time and energy being upset [read: "completely wrecked"] that this or that thing or time or place ended and is no more.  I hate that I ever got to a place in life where I'd been "taken out" by the enemy with such a sly, simple tactic--making me think the best days of my life are behind me.  

Remember in that movie A Night at the Museum, right before Robin Williams/Teddy Roosevelt turned back into a statue, and he was talking to Ben Stiller's character?  Ben said "I have no idea what I'm gonna do tomorrow." And Robin Williams said "how exciting!"  Do you feel truly excited about knowing that you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen tomorrow?  I bet if you're honest, that notion scares you. It does me.  But I'm learning to enjoy the not knowing.  And with that comes less emphasis on the importance of what I've already done.  At least I hope so.  Into the light!  

Have a good day.