Let's Get Moving

A last couple shots from our spring vacation to Pennsylvania are on tap today. Here are my boys, 12-year-old Drew on the left, 15-year-old Logan on the right, getting ready for a day of exploration and learning in one of our country's famed national landmarks, the Gettysburg Battlefield. Did I say they're getting ready? My mistake.

Drew's eyes are glazed by the syrupy glare of the television. Logan is almost unconscious in his close focus upon his Game Boy. So I did some hollering to get the boys moving, to which they responded with a frustrating lack of the requisite energy, purpose, or enthusiasm. So I increased the volume and intensity of the hollering, a practice from which I derive only momentary pleasures, though one must enjoy the pleasures one can in such circumstances. The greater intensity did get them moving. But the motivation for their movement was for other reasons than I had striven. Logan thought this a chance to grab the camera and get a shot of me in the act. Now before you decide to call the those ever-so-vigilant Texas authorities on me, I must say I was hamming it up a bit for the camera. And that hair? Well, that's what it really looks like on most mornings when I am in need of a cut.

And so we see that our lofty excogitations upon the meaning of the mnost profound human experiences are often mixed with a massive dose of the mundane vagaries of daily life, of getting dressed and brushing the teeth, of having a bite to eat and loading up the car, of getting and keeping the kids moving and trying to keep ourselves chipper and upbeat.