Friday feels like the lift-off to another Memorial Day weekend, – an interlude of graduation celebrations, of weddings, of cook-out gatherings, of ceremonies of patriotic posturing. We agree to pause, to call a time-out to the day to day routine for all of this…

I plan to “lean in” to absorb the ebb and flow of the engagement(s) that are in store. I am certain that I am embedded within my time, occupying my place in the herd.

A flight of fantasy, unmitigated delusion to think that “the individual” is bedrock. No one is an island. Each and everyone of us is a fragment-of-the-whole. Individualism is an inherited ideal, useful, necessary, but one of many ideals in our box of crayon colors. Here in America, we’ve made much too much of individualism. Too many of us are desperately lonely, isolated, stuck in the victim-hood of our own story. Have another helping of T! Forgive my sick joke…

Freedom of choice? As of this moment, I doubt it. Will I change my mind? Likely.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

–No Man (or Woman) Is An Island by John Donne

A song, a song! Enjoy this one! Dancing In The Dark by Bruce Springsteen.