Posted Mar. 10, 2024

Everyone was talking about him. Everywhere he went, crowds followed. His speeches were mesmerizing. On one occasion he was walking along the edge of a lake when he came to a hillside. He motioned to the crowd to go sit on the hillside..

He spotted an old rowboat and had one of his crew row him out in the lake a bit. He spoke. He projected his voice so well that the thousands on the hillside could hear every word. All morning he spoke of how the world would be so much better if people would follow him. The crowd became restless as he realized it was well past noon.

He announced a break and told everyone to have lunch. But not everyone brought a lunch – in fact very few thought they would be here this long. So everybody shared and somehow everybody was full. Lunch break was over. He stood up in the boat and spoke about life for another couple of hours. He closed the seminar, thanked everyone for coming, and bid them to return home and share his stories. There was a buzz in the air as people headed home. They were asking each other about all the stories he had told.

The crowd gone, his support crew gathered around and asked what the meanings of the stories were. He explained that storytelling is a good way to teach people about life principles. Most people can understand the surface level of the story and learn from it. But you are asking about the deeper meanings of the stories. That is why you are a member of my crew. And there are others in that crowd who will go home and ponder these stories. They will find the hidden meanings, and it will transform their life.

Eddie’s Life....

Eddie stood in his front yard and watched the big boys getting on the bus to go to school.

“When I get to be six I’ll go to school, and it will be very nice,” he said.

But when Eddie got to be six and did go to school, it wasn’t all that nice.

“When I get to high school it’ll be keen,“ Eddie said, dreaming of being a football star, driving his own jalopy, and having big muscles under his letter sweater.

But when Ed got to high school, things didn’t work out the way he had planned.

“When I get out of this dumb place,” he said with disgust, “I’m going to the University, where they treat you like an adult. It won’t be boring, and the girls are too mature to care whether or not you are a football star.”

The University didn’t work out the way Ed planned either.

“Well.” he said, “life is really going to begin when I graduate, get a good job, and have my own apartment.”

But life didn’t seem to get started very well, even when Ed found a pretty good job and had a much too expensive apartment all to himself.

“I’m so lonely,” he said. “That’s what’s wrong. Just about everything that’s wrong with my life now would be solved if I had a good wife.”

Marriage did solve a lot of Ed’s problems, but it created a few more – like money problems for instance.

“Just think how it would be if I got that promotion,” Ed chortled to his wife. “We could get a second car, go to Bermuda for our vacations, and even buy a home with a bedroom for each of the kids!”

Ed did get that promotion. But – the bigger income was soon swallowed up in bigger bills, and he was under just as much financial strain as ever. And with his new responsibilities he was under even greater psychological pressure at the office. No, the promotion didn’t make life happen.

“Life will really be wonderful,” Edward mused as he looked searchingly at the gray at his temples in the mirror, “when I retire. I’ll still be relatively young, and I can fish, hunt – be free of responsibilities.”

Edward retired. He was out in his new boat one day, heading for a spot where the lodge’s proprietor had assured him he’d have no trouble catching a six or eight pound bass.

“All my life I’ve been looking for happiness and contentment,” he thought as the boat slid across the water. “When I get used to this retirement way of life, I think it’s finally going to be great!”

Of course by now he really didn’t believe that. That’s why he added (to reassure himself), “Now, for the first time, I feel like life – real living – is just around the corner!” With a searing pain in his chest, Edward turned that corner. And there it was, waiting for him. No not life....

That’s what good play is all about.

No directions, nobody telling you that
“you can’t do it that way”.

It’s pure discovery!