Rites of Passage

The day promised to be bright and beautiful, and it put the old spring back into my step as I sashayed down the trail around Brunswick Lake. I was feeling better than better, and I'll tell you why.

The events of recent months had left me feeling like I once felt while swimming at the bottom of Soddy Lake, scrambling around to find a few pebbles to bring back to the surface to prove to the boys on the bridge that I'd made it all the way to the bottom.

But hold on; I've just realized that this opening may leave a few of you wondering just what the hell I'm talking about. Let's put it in context, and then I'll get on with the topic for the day. I promise to be brief.

In the days of yore, most of my relatives and I lived near the lake, close to where it joined the Tennessee River. We had many traditional challenges, which I later learned are called rites of passage, and most of them involved water.

One of these, which was intended to occur before the 16th birthday, was to dive from atop the railing of Armstrong Bridge and go all the way to the bottom of the lake, into the trench where a cold mountain spring still flows, and then fill your hand with gravel to bring back to the surface.


Bring the gravel up, and you're ready for driving, dating, and preparing for manhood. Otherwise, you're still a child. The prerequisites for this event were to first jump from the top of a bridge support column, and later dive from that same column, a distance of about 16. The distance from the top rail to the surface of the water was about 24 feet.

And so when I say that I'd felt like the kid swimming around in the dark, cold water trying to find a handful of pebbles, I hope you will get the gist.

But on this morning, I found myself in the bright, clear light of day, sunshine and birdsong energizing my walk and lifting my mood into the stratosphere, not too near the sun.

I felt like Icarus, who I'm sure you remember from high school, and imagined that I joined the local birds of prey soaring all the way up to those towering cotton-ball clouds.

It was one for the record books, and I'm still feeling its effects. Mornings like this make me feel that I can do anything and that the future is too bright to be without the polychromatic, UVA UVB eyeshades. 

It's a wonderful feeling, even though we know there's always something hiding around the corner waiting for us to become distracted by some shiny object, and planning to trip us up when we're not looking.

Still, there's nothing like the feeling that comes from sitting on top of the world with a rainbow 'round the shoulder, if only for a little while.

It's best if we keep in mind, no matter how good things may be, that life comes fast, and it comes hard. Be ready for it, my friend. And with that, I wish you a great remainder of the day and fierce qigong to you.