The Next Wave

Denver tomorrow.

Minneapolis/St. Paul next week.

Then I am home for a full week before spending almost a full week in Philadelphia.

By then I will be keeping my fingers crossed because because there are three weeks in a row with no trips scheduled for the rest of the month. Then it is off to Baltimore.

In the past two months I've been to Santa Barbara, Cleveland, Anchorage, San Juan, Pittsburgh and ... St. Martin.

Crazy huh?

Someone whose career has been working with the poor, homeless, sick and infected ... could be construed as a jet setter. I certainly spend my fair share of times sitting on jets.

Never in a million years did I think that I would see the world ... but I have. Especially doing this kind of work! Now I am working for an International Company providing health care to people on the streets and have daily interactions with people doing incredible work in ... China, Africa, Iceland ... and the list just keeps growing. If things continue the way they are ... according to plan (and we all know about plans ... they rarely work out) I'll be visiting all of these places.

Let me put that in perspective. I am part of a group of crazy people (well ... several groups of crazy people actually but I digress) who believe that people on the streets of the world deserve quality health care. Mother Teresa stuff. Actually ... Mother Teresa's people are involved. That's pretty cool too.

Zed Zha is in Peking and has as a tag on her emails ... a quote by Henry David Thoreau. "When were the good and the brave ever in a majority."

Hmmm...

Isn't that funny? A medical student in China who runs a student led medical clinic in a communist country is providing medicine to those on the streets (there's homelessness in Communist countries? ... I was in Cuba not too long ago and there is). She quotes Thoreau.

It's a small world after all.

And she has me mulling Thoreau this morning in Corporate Headquarters on the beloved back deck of my house. Especially when the Republicans debated last night and the President has ongoing discussions with himself.

"When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?"

The answer is rarely.

And when they were it didn't last.

I sit here pondering this. I am committed to a cause which is far more than a job. The job is guaranteed though the end of the year then there are ... possibilities. Which is all that any of us have really ... even if the job seems solid. Or the marriage. Or the house. Or the kids. Or the things that we have always believed in.

The other day I described life as riding a wave. The thing to do is catch it when it comes by and ride it ... enjoy it ... because we have no idea where it is taking us ... or how long it will last ... so the thing is to not let it pass you by ... and to stay on top of it and not under it.

Mine is starting to crest. A new crescendo is coming. I've ridden waves before and they were cool. Jeff Street. Union Mission. Janice. Julie. Life as an author. Life as a speaker. Waves that took me around the world only to land on Tybee Island.

But all of that is small potatoes.

This wave that I'm catching now.

Dude!

This is a wave.

Either catch it too.

Or get out of the way.