To rust

Tattoos and scars are different things. Unless a person has been forced to have the external design injected into their skin - then normally a tattoo is something that is achieved by choice, but a scar is usually something caused by an accident, negligence or abuse. A scar is an invisible area of darkness within our lives. The problem with scars are that they have immense power over us and can easily build up a wall that seems impossible to overcome...... if we allow it. As human beings we build walls for our own protection and safety, but it actually has different aspects to it. To build a wall is stating that there is a boundary in place and is usually impossible to climb, unless the fear of the size and thickness of the wall does not intimidate the climber. It also says that whatever is inside needs protecting. When i think of walls and boundaries i think of the fairy tales i have heard in my lifetime. The beautiful princess alone in a castle tower, looking, searching, hoping for her handsome hero to bravely come riding towards her on a white horse. A muscle wearing horse whose flowing white mane dances in the breeze as he thunders along the open plains.. A horse that maybe answers to the name of "Honour." Upon its back is a dashing hero with blonde wavy hair that matches his golden smile. His name is Prince Gallant. Together they defeat their enemies and bandits along their journey which strengthens their focus and endurance for gaining their prize. A wife for the Prince and another friend for the horse. As they reach the tower of lonely cries they face the huge obstacle of climbing the wall. An opportunity to turn back and seek an easier maiden no doubt. But this Handsome hero is focussed and ready for any task.

So a wall is built to separate people and it does exactly that. But not only does it keep people from getting in, it also stops the person on the inside from getting out. So take the the word "Trust" .....add 1 letter to it and it changes everything. Add an "o" and it says "to rust". Pronounced similar to the original, but with a completely different meaning. After a few storms, rain, even an extreme coldness, metal will not only change its outward appearance but slowly break into smaller pieces, losing its strength and can be a hazard to surrounding objects. Rust will not only effect non living things but plants too. Its a plant disease that produces a reddish-brown discoloration of leaves and stems, caused by various rust fungi robbing the plant of its natural beauty. So the deterioration, lack of strength and non ability to complete its task is all caused by weather and time, which could be described as the storms of life.
So as human beings we have been given lots of choices in our lives and one of them is to either trust or to rust.

One day a man was walking his dog along the cliff top. The wind was blowing the trees and after a few minutes he had already seen his tweed peaked cap fly over the edge and drop down into the crashing waves below. The wind was getting stronger, his dog was continually barking and our young explorer struggled to stand up straight as he leaned into the wind. The leash flew out of his hand and like his hat he now saw his dog run off into the distance. Bashed by the storm he lost his step and slipped on a loose rock which took him on the same journey as his favourite walking cap. Falling down towards the waves he managed to grab a branch poking out from the cliff face. Holding onto it with all his strength he started to wear fear like a scarf, wrapped around him and occasionally slapping his face. Eventually he cries out

"Help!" Only silence answers him.

He cries out again with a desperateness in his voice "Help!" no answer yet again,

"Heeeeeeeeeeellllllllp!" he screams, tears rolling down his face onto his aching arms.

"LET GO OF THE BRANCH, I WILL CATCH YOU" said a deep voice booming from the heavens.

"How can you catch me, i cant even see you. Is anyone else there, Help!"" he cries.

So because of our understanding of past events in our lives we allow the past to dictate our future. We surrender our strength and give it the power to make us understand and trust only in the things that we can see and know. But to trust, that is really birthed from the unknown, a new journey, a new experience, a chance to explore deeper into another human being and deeper within ourselves.

As children we are told not to touch the hot pans in the kitchen, that it is dangerous and we will get hurt. But sometimes our personality's like to rebel against warnings and instead of taking notice to the wisdom that is shared we go ahead and do the exact opposite. We touch the pan, we burn our fingers and we shout and cry because of the pain, sometimes we shout at the wisdom giver and accuse them of not warning us correctly. Instead of listening and learning the softer way, we learn the hard way....by getting hurt. But over time the one thing we would remember about the incident is the pain that we felt. Sometimes that burn is strong enough to make people avoid cooking. A few years ago i was working with an Autistic adult who gave me an amazing experience. This fully grown muscle man had a scar that ran from his shoulder to his elbow. A big scar that could only be made by boiling hot water. Maybe he was told not to touch the pans and he rebelled, i don't know. But i was filling the washing bowl up with hot water after our evening meal and this guy came out of his comfort zone and came up to me, gently pushed me out of the way and turned on the cold water. He was a man living behind a medical wall but he himself climbed that wall to protect another person. He trusted me enough to overcome his own barrier of getting close to people. It was an incredible moment for me and he taught me so much in those few seconds.

The bible says "It is better to trust God than to trust man" What does this mean? Does it mean we are all bad and doomed, no! It means that the author of the bible knows what human beings can be like. Our imperfections, our reactions, our behaviours are not a secret to Him. So not only does He know what we are like, but an awareness that all people are capable of being the same. That we as human beings hurt each other, sometimes without even knowing it.

I have had the most beautiful people i have ever met hurt me. They didnt mean to, it was something that just happened. But it was my reaction to their mistake that was important. At that point i had the power to end the friendships or to work through it, and today i am grateful that i did not turn and run, but to face the truth that they had said about me.

Some times a physical position is needed. In a war, soldiers are taught to be prepared and you can almost imagine the warriors all through time of maybe placing their right foot forward and their left foot to one side, crouched down and ready to attack. Maybe the foot to the left is a ready position to run if the attack seems to fierce. But what if the person attacking dosen't actually attack but approaches in a different way, a softer way, a more friendly way? It means the defender has to change their stance. A physical action needs to be taken to accommodate the new encounter. But a fighting stance is not really an attacking stance, its a defence action. As a human being, it is alot easier to take on the defensive attitude of "maybe i will get hurt through this, so i need to be ready" than it is to think that maybe the new encounter is going to be amazing. Its human nature. In Texas USA they have an unwritten law....."you come on my land i will shoot you." But what if the new visitor was bringing lottery winnings to your home address? What if its a long lost school friend? What if its the exact person they have been waiting for all their lives? The wrong stance could make or break their new journey.

So the key is not too allow our past to dictate our future, but to choose on how we want that first step to land, with a positive footprint or a negative footprint. But either way.....it is our choice.



None of us are cactus's, we all like to be touched.


© Travelling Boy content belongs to Philip D Norris

The root

A root of a tree is a powerful thing. Its the source of all life for it. Nourishment and growth are transported through the twisted snakelike foundations. The future of the tree lies cradled within its root. From one root there could be glorious fruit, colour and even a scent that could be pleasing to the nose of both humans and living creatures. The strongest of Oak trees, the fragility of the Weeping Willow, both started with one root. The 300ft Red trees of California have grown to such great heights because of the power and direction of their roots. A dead tree however, bare, fruitless and brown with its bark falling away, dies first in the root and then it progresses into the branches and the leaves, losing all of its splendour of life. So it is with human beings. From the day our mothers give birth to us, our roots begin to grow. Our personal tree of life will grow one way or another and it will encounter certain things that could change its course, block or enhance its growth and determine the quality of fruit that we bare. The strange thing about an Olive tree is that as it grows, it will twist and turn in its own direction, it will be its own leader and it will create some very unusual patterns. But through all of this, they actually grow in a way that they were not made to, but eventually, over the years they become something beautiful and a masterpiece.
So like an Olive tree, i have made some wrong decision's in my life. I have travelled down roads that i thought were the right way for me, and time after time it was proven that i was wrong. But the problem with this is the realization of one very simple statement....."the hardest thing in the world to change is a belief system."

Through numerous crossroads and obstacles and years of abuse, caused by others emotionally, or by myself, emotionally physically and mentally, my opinion of myself became very low. The scars from these things although invisible to the untrained eye are very visible to me. If you sat on the beach and drew a line in the sand, waited until the sea washed over it and erased the groove that was made, in our eyes we could still the line. Even days later, when taking a walk along the beach and reaching that same point we would remember the feeling of cutting into the sand and we are capable of picturing that line again, even though it may not be there.

My wrong belief system started to bare its fruit. Negativity became the source of my life. It fed me, it blurred my vision of how i see things. How i see people, situations and how i see myself. If i had known better, i would have done better. But like those racehorse's lining up for the years biggest race, with leather blinkers over the side of each eye to avoid distraction, that is how i have been. Negativity became my blinkers and it was all i saw and knew. When people said something complimentary i didn't believe them. When people said something positive i didn't believe them. When people said something bad, i believed them. That was easy to believe because i was already plugged into the negative life source, so it became natural to me. To always think the worst in people, places and things.

A few years ago i was living in Texas USA. I had run from everything that i knew in the hope that my head would not follow me to the other side of the world. But instead, i remember very clearly that it greeted me when i touched down at Dallas airport. I had no escape, no way out and no where to hide from the root of my tree. I remember due to a bad relationship i was in, negative situation and a hopeless state of affairs, i had decided to go for a long walk. 4 hours had passed, many roads were taken but my mind was still the same - pumping negativity through my veins. I came upon a crossroads, one road went into the unknown and another went back to the place i had run from. I sat at that crossroads for over an hour, crying because i didn't know which way to go. I did not know that negativity is a brother to fear and lack of self worth and a cousin to a continual feeling of failure. Fear will stop a person being brave and going into the unknown. Lack of self worth will tell a person that they cant achieve anything and the feeling of failure....well that just says "game over." Eventually i had made my decision and as it was proven again it was the wrong decision. When i got back to the place i was living in i found the person i was with in bed with somebody else. If only i had been brave enough to keep going i could have saved myself from more invisible scars. But i didn't believe in myself and that stopped me from moving forward. The road we know is usually the easier one to take, but the road that smells of bravery is normally right behind the sign that says "do not enter, fear lives here." That crossroads in Texas was a very real sign to me. I was given the opportunity to change, to grow, to overcome, but i was a coward and i choose the way that i knew. I was not brave enough to walk into the dark without a torch and to feel my way through to the destination that was laid out before me. I choose to go the way where i could see. And so it has been like that all of my life. Negativity has been worn by me like an aftershave or cologne, something that is put on every morning. The problem with it is that it smells disgusting. It turns people away instead of drawing them closer. So then i am stuck alone with the stink of rotten fruit.

Until recently, this had been the source of my life, the energy within my body, the destination of my focus. But recently, through more crossroads and opportunity's, i have been able to see that there is another way. Its called positive thinking. A new concept to this battle scarred travelling boy. A new wave over the line of pain drawn in the sand. Money can buy alot of things but it can't buy this. All the money in the world can not buy freedom. Freedom from negativity can only be purchased by a decision. Before that decision there must be a pause button, so i can make that choice and not be blinkered again like those 4 legged money machines. To take a step back, to pause, to see and weigh up both routes, has become a necessity for me now. But that does not mean that i make the right choice every time, it means that i am worthy of making a choice and that my choice's are important. That i can no longer be controlled by something i don't see and by that i can see a bigger picture, not just the inside of two leather blinkers.

When it is my time to go from this world, i don't want to be the type of person who says to my grandchildren "don't try this and don't try that because there dangerous." but instead a person that says "Go out there, experience all that life has to offer you, you may fall, you may stumble, but you can always pick yourself up and try again. Your life is worth more than to stay laying down." Because the only thing we could leave as an inheritance of our lives that is worth anything, anything at all.......is our story.

I have recently come across a wonderful quote, which i read daily. Written by Henry Ford, the guy who invented the motor car. At some point in his life, proberly when he was being verbally abused for his ideas and told that his opinion on something was not good enough, he had this revelation and said....

"Whether you think you can or you can't, either way you are right."





© Travelling Boy content belongs to Philip D Norris