Everything that has a form within our field of vision changes. Steel rusts. Stone crumbles. Hair disappears and then reappears elsewhere. People age, move, and eventually move on.

We’re all driven with an obsession toward immortality – to leave our imprint behind so that our time here might mean something.

A marker …a legacy .. an asset by which our lives might be defined in the stories told by those who remain here to tell stories after we leave.

We are try to control the narrative of a future story shared by another raconteur.

I had a dream last night. I dreamt that I was in the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel .

The Lord Beaverbrook aka Max Aitken left a legacy to be sure.

I mean to start he was a Lord right ?

He had a hotel, university buildings and even the residence I spent my first year in named after him. We lovingly called it Animal House and likely behaved in a way that wasn’t consistent with the future story he imagined would be attached to his name.

Nonetheless he definitely established a narrative that would define him if not a bunch of first year college boys.

Of course he did – he was a media baron.

But back to dreamland – I was in the elegant hotel restaurant with a single friend of mine. Over the course of our lunch I realized other friends began floating in.

Friends from Fredericton, and then friends from Montreal, and friends from Rosemere , friends from Banff and Toronto, friends from Australia, friends from Italy and New York , friends from Holland and Florida, friends from Alberta, friends from Calgary and Vancouver.

Friends from pretty much every educational course, athletic activity, bar, restaurant career stop or happenstance that had paused me long enough to make their initial acquaintance.

I began to have this awareness that, though they were all, you know, a little older and maybe a little wider, their smiles were the same.

And the smiles were just lighting up my heart.

I’ve had this statement that I’ve circled in my mind – a mantra – immortality sought that rather pursue immortality in the in the material will eventually be as gone as my ponytail. Instead the surest path to lasting immortality can only be found in the acts of our lives we do of others.

In those acts we find a small corner of someone else’s heart and when in the heart of someone else, we establish the possibility to transcend our existence here.

And often, those acts go forward in stories.

How this person or that person did such a kind thing one day for us.

I lost two friends in the last couple of weeks. And I suppose that’s why I had that dream last night. I dreamt of all of you and others who have resided in my heart for as long as I can remember.

On the threshold of existence a friend of many decades gave me the most meaningful lesson I believe I have had the privilege of being exposed to.

“ When you remember me, don’t think only of the wild and crazy times … think too of the moments we were bored ..the moments we did nothing but be together.”

At first I didn’t take his meaning but not long after like a dream he whispered in my ear.

“ From the view I have now. I’m telling you it’s all precious.”

I feel blessed for those things that are not definable. Things that can’t be described or drawn.

Things like Frendship

Family

Grace

Kindness

And the most ethereal of all – Love

The only way those things can be fully understood is to experience them.

And I’ve experienced these in so many ways in my life, and for that, I’m profoundly grateful.

Value everything you can’t see.

This post is dedicated to two that live on in my heart: Paul Johnson, and my dear friend Kevin Flynn.