Sail Home, Teddy Bear

On my desk is a musical snow globe. I’ve had it for almost ten years now and I look at it as a reminder of times long before now. When times were much more simpler and the answers were much more easier to come by.

The inside is that of a teddy bear in a blue sailor suit looking through a spyglass. He’s standing a toy sailboat with a patch in the sail and treasure box behind him. When you wind up the music box part of him, the song that plays is “It’s a Small World After All.”

I was in high school when I got this keepsake. It was given to me by a teacher I still talk to today. While she was out shopping one day afterschool, she saw this snow globe and she thought it reminded her so much of me; a lost soul with so many talents and dreams, but hard pressed to find where it was he belonged in the world. That was me. In a way, I still think that’s me.

Over the years, I’ve started numerous projects, helped complete strangers, dedicated a portion of my life to helping the generation after me get a foothold into lives they didn’t think were possible. All the while, I set aside my own hopes and aspirations to put theirs ahead of mine. Was it because that was just who I am as a person, was it because that was what God wanted me to do with that period of time in my life and wanted me to go through the personal hell in the background that I was going through, or was I just not selfish enough to throw everyone else under the bus and do what I wanted? I still don’t have an answer to this day.

What bothers me more than most is that I’m not sure if all the time that I put into half the things in that part of my life were even worth it. I’m reminded periodically by some of those people I helped how ungrateful they actually are to the  years I put into helping people. Perhaps it’s their loss, but it certainly is disheartening to know that there are people who’s souls are just that dark.

At night, as part of the curse I have endured ever since I had taken pencil to paper and fingers to keys, I stop and wonder if every story is worth telling. There are millions and millions books in the world and my story will soon be part of the masses. It will be part of a silent society of hard bound pages sitting in store or library bookshelves. I often wonder, is the story I intend to tell the world the story I really want them to know.

Beyond that, I wonder about my future. I wonder about the dreams that I think of every time I listen to music and think about what life would be like if I hit the writing jackpot of having a best seller. And I wonder of a simple life. A life spent on my own, doing the things that normal people do, spending my days working and writing, every now and then having the dream that I once had that I would be great and people would would know my name as they might remember recent authors like Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer. I wonder what I would be doing with my life while I’m writing and working on another story that I will probably spend years writing and perfecting.

While it’s not a sad thing to think about one’s future, it can become overwhelming to wonder about so much and wonder even more about how soon you might actually get to that point. It’s even more of a wonder to think that even if you get to that part of your life, is that really where you were meant to end up? With all the talents and abilities that we’re born with and we never use, do we ever really end up where we truly belong? Do we ever really find the place in the world we’re meant to spend our days?

And when the world is just too much to handle anymore, when the questions of my destiny and my future are just too much to hold onto in my mind, I look over to the corner of my desk. There, looking at me through his spyglass is my companion. The little teddy bear in his boat trying to find the place to leave his treasure. I play his song and realize that the world is indeed a small place with many questions we never know the answer to until the time comes that they need answering. But the journey that we take to find them will determine if the answers we get were the ones we were hoping we’d find.

“The journey home will be rough, Little Bear. Guard safe your treasures as I will guard safe my dreams of your final destination.”