Tuesday, January 11, 2011

What do your snow tracks show?


In honor of the storm, here’s a snow story.
As a young man, I was inspired by “The Fountainhead”.
Ayn Rand created a super individualist in Howard Roark.
I saw myself as another Howard Roark. Uncompromising.
Maybe you saw yourself like that, too. It’s courageous.
That led to my interest in the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wright, like Roark, was uncompromising.
It almost cost him his career as a struggling architect.
No one wanted to work with him. He was too obstinate.
But his concepts were unique. Original. Daring.
The quality of his ideas and his work saved his career.
Wright had a humorless uncle. A straight-arrow kind of guy.
Walking across a snowy field, he gave Wright a lesson.
“My tracks go straight across the field,” his uncle said.
“I know where I’m going and I get there.
“Your tracks wander all over the place,” he told Wright.
“You’re too easily distracted by everything you see.”
His uncle taught Wright a lesson in that snowy field.
But it wasn’t the lesson he thought he was teaching.
After that, Wright decided to wander all over the place.
For the rest of his life, the world was wide and strange.
Wright held fast to his sense of wonder and discovery.
He wanted to experience everything life would yield.
It was all fodder for his restless imagination.
No wonder he created such original architecture.
In this wintry weather, think what your tracks tell you.
Are you exploring all that life has to offer?
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