Anyway, I was in the mountains for some story shoots. Went to Fayetteville to see my nephew Jonathan promoted to Air Force Captain. Then back home to start writing an all-new Carolina Traveler show.

I’m sure you spent the last two Tuesdays adrift… listless. It’s tough. I know my powerful journals about birds nesting on my porch, and my lawn care habits is the glue holding all our worlds together.

Which reminds me… a great old friend of mine, Dave Elder, in Columbus, Ohio, read my journals about my bird issues and sent me an e-mail suggesting this basically: “Get a life and leave your yard once in a while.” When I read it, I laughed out loud. We have the kind of friendship where we can tell each other to go to, um, well, you know. That’s the only kind of friendship I value.

If I’ve never told you to go do something unseemly to yourself or you haven’t told me the same chances are we’re not close friends.

Dave and I go way back to high school days. We know things about each other that would shock our mothers. (Mom, anything Dave says is a lie.) We even went to the same college… for a year. Dave stuck it out and got his Landscape Architecture degree and went on to a successful career in community planning and development.

I spent my freshman year writing really bad music with another buddy Chris Lagnese (Chris had talent. I had none but needed a fake creative outlet from the drudgery of pretending to learn.), going to parties non-stop and throwing water balloons at the pizza delivery guy from my 8th floor dorm room. I confess this now because the statute of limitations is up, say, 21 years ago.

Here’s the thing… if I were my own son at that age I would have sat myself down and said, “Me… er… Son, you are wasting everything God put in you. If you don’t straighten up, you’ll be a colossal screw up at life.”

Some of those words actually came true in my life in the late 1980s. I struggled to make sense of life. But here’s the other thing… sometimes life is short and you need to “seize the day” and sometimes -- and I find this more true each day -- life is long… and you need to seize nothing at all. What you need is to see things from 35,000 feet up.

I was a lost soul for a while but I turned out okay. Life is long.

A good number of you watched your son or daughter graduate high school in the last couple weeks. Take a snapshot of who they are now and remember this: in 10, 20, 25 years they’ll be one heck of a lot wiser. Some will marry the boy or girl you hate. Some will marry the one you chose. Some are going to fall in love, have children and then go through a tragic and painful divorce. Some will make monumental mistakes and scrape along the bottom before waking up. Some will make a fortune and then lose it all. Some will bomb out of college and then start a new internet service that will make millions. Some will do the very opposite of everything you tell them and you’ll wonder if they have a sensible bone in their body… and some will be so much like you you’ll wonder if they ever have their own independent thoughts.

Life is long. Don’t get too freaked out by today. If you want to be present for it all, take a deep breath and see everything from way up high.

I have no idea where I’m going with this. I guess I’ve met a bunch of up-tight parents recently.

The book I’m reading says you can’t add a single day to your life by worrying. I wonder if the opposite is true. If I worry less will I live longer?

Now that’s a nice long-term goal.

Okay, I’ve rambled enough. I have to go see a guy about a lion.

Be well,

Mike Redding