A place for everything, and…

Going to college was an awakening for me.  Being the first in my immediate family to have had this opportunity, I entered a world for which I had no precedents or clearly marked roadmaps. As fortune would have it, the stranger who was paired with me as my first roommate became a life-long friend. That was anything but assured when we were linked together as freshmen. You see, we were so different from one another. I was an athlete in spirit, he was one in fact. I tilted to the right politically, he to the left. I preferred AM-rock, he folk music. In so many ways, I was the yang to his yin, my neat-nick organizational bent contrasting to his accepting, free-form, roll-with-life temperament. I now recognize myself as the “good fences make good neighbors” counterpart to his Robert Frost, especially in how we negotiated the appearance of our dorm room. His oft-repeated slogan, “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” became his tongue-in-cheek coda to my flurries of irritated room-cleaning activity that punctuated our co-existence. Only recently have I realized that this maxim was not of his origination, but can be traced to another great thinker whom I imagine might have made both a good neighbor, and roommate.

While I don’t consider myself as preoccupied with order as those Monkish characters that TV likes to parody—a look into the junk drawers in my desk gives ample testimony to this assertion—I am fascinated with where things fit and belong in their various systems of organization. That may be why I am so drawn to timelines, historical sequences, and even biological taxonomies. Few of these passions has ever helped me in making agreeable small-talk, although they have proven useful in games of trivia. Yet I find that knowing where things are and how to retrieve them is both assuring and comforting. That is why, after two years crafting Twilight Reflections essays for my website, www.Sumthoughts.com, I am happy to have catalogued all of them in an easy to find and use topical index. 

For reasons I hope go beyond creating a place for everything and everything in its place, I have grouped them in six broad categories:

·      America, Patriotism and Politics—of which there are 25 essays

·      Culture and Society—43 essays

·      Education and Learning—13 essays

·      Ethics, Faith and Spirituality—20 essays

·      Identity, Perspective and Relationships—35 essays

·      Time, Space and Ultimate Questions—12 essays

Since my writings reflect the eclectic sprawl of my thinking process, a number of the essays have been cross-referenced into two or more of the aforementioned subject headings. Each of them, regardless of the category in which they now reside, offers my take on a question or topic that was on my mind, one I trust will resonate with those of you who take the time to read them. I’d like to think that most of these five minute reads contain words worth keeping and rereading—-hence my effort at organizing them for quick, simple retrieval.  All one has to do is click the pull down BLOG menu at the top of the website, find the subject category of greatest interest, and highlight the title or image of any of the essays that piques your curiosity.

Now that I’ve tidied up what was a sprawling, multi-screen collection of random essays, what is next? I’d like to stick to my original project and keep thinking out loud via these reflective pieces—just not as frequently. But since inspiration and creativity never seem to run on a predictable schedule, I think it best that my impulse to write be directed by the provocations of the spirit rather than the obligations of a weekly calendar. This will also allow me to devote more time to some longer literary projects that have been simmering on very low heat for many years. I suspect some of them have already stuck to the bottom of the pan in which their ingredients were first concocted. But I hold out the hope that, by stirring a few others, they may someday be ready to serve to those who have the stomach for them.  Time will tell.

Those of you who have been receiving these essays via a direct email invitation will continue to do so, unless you choose to remove yourself from my distribution list. And those who chance upon them courtesy of Facebook’s posting whims—and who would like to guarantee their more certain arrival—please let me know of your desire to get on the list. All you have to do is shoot me an email, or sign up at the bottom of the current BLOG or complete the information requested on the Contact pull-down at the top of the website. It’s all very tidy, isn’t it? But what else would you expect from someone who is most comfortable living in a world where there is a place for everything, and everything fits best when in its own place.