Love... it's where it's at.

 
What I have worked for has mostly come to pass.  I wanted a life love... I worked hard to prepare for it, and I got it in a spectacular way upon meeting the love of my life, Amy Ayers on August 20th 2012, when I received a little friend request on facebook.  I wrote a quick note, she wrote a quick note back, and a bunch of notes later I was booking a flight up to visit her in my roots of central Ohio, as we went to high school together back in 97-01.  From there one of us visited the other at least once a month between that time until after our marriage on October 25th, 2013 to when Amy moved down to live with me once and for all on January 2nd, 2014.  That is the story of us in a nutshell, maybe I will elaborate more on it later.  Just know that, come our wedding day... we danced and danced and danced.  Below are the few first facebook messages that we wrote, copied in... don't think Amy will care (I kept them all):
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·  Nathan Dawes Mann

Hey Amy, long time. Good to see you here on facebook. How's your life going?
~ Nathan

·  August 20, 2012

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8:52pm

Amy Ayers

Hey Nate! its been quite a bit of time..bit i refuse to grow old! thats for sissies. i cant complain about my life. how about yours?

· 

11:37pm

Nathan Dawes Mann

amen to that! "Some grow young, some grow cold." Good to hear your life is well... looks like you have a baby boy now? He's cute!!!
As for my life, it is great. I currently own a home down here in Atlanta, Georgia and teach tennis and play the bagpipes for a living. I also have a German Shepherd named Jack that keeps me good company, along with the four roommates that pay all my bills... plus It's great because 3 of 4 are rarely ever here, so it works out very well. What else, I own a 35-foot veggie-fueled school bus rv conversion that I sometimes live in and am planning to take to Alaska for three months next summer... I'll be playing pipe gigs all along the way at Irish pubs for their waste veggie oil, tips, and a meal... gonna be fun.
That's my current story in a nutshell... you?
~ Nathan

·  August 21, 2012

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7:03pm

Amy Ayers

word! i like that quote. with your permission i will post this all over the place and use it repeatedly in my daily life no babies for me yet, i have two nephews and that is the newest one. i havent met the right man yet and sometimes .......you sound like such an intriguing person and your life is more interesting then mine! i love to watch tennis!!! and i love german shepards i currently live by myself in an apartment in hilliard, love living alone for the first time since march. i work as a treatment plan coordinator at a dental office in dublin, however id really like to go to grad school. but who knows...im pretty happy with life.. cant complain...if you ever make it back to ohio ive got alot of veggie oil and would love to take a ride in the veggie fueled wagon
p.s. roger federer is my idol
~ Amy

·  August 23, 2012

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12:20am

Nathan Dawes Mann

haha of course you can. So that baby isn't yours? And you're single? Wow, I woulda never thought that in a million years back in high school... from what I remember you were the big catch. All the guys talked about you and I could see why So, you love tennis and german shepherds... jeez! Do you like the bagpipes too? So what does a treatment plan coordinator do? Coordinate treatment plans? I might need my wisdom teeth taken out soon... haha
Yes, I would love to take you for a ride in my bus whenever it goes that way...

12:31am

 


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Fast forward to now, August 28th 2014.  Amy has just arrived in central Ohio on a flight to see her family for Labor Day weekend.  I had to work so I stayed back.

I sit here comfortably at my posh desk (got it for free, but that doesn't change the point) in my office with my Bose stereo (paid only $50 for it) playing Irish music while a washer washes my clothes in the other room and I sit with a glass of wine at my side, my (free) German Shepherd panting beside me with a ceiling fan to give me a nice breeze on the back of my neck as I sit in a big black high back rolling, swiveling desk chair (free too) with a nice desk lamp lighting a picture of my two grand-dads standing arm in arm as good friends would.  All is well, so well.  And herein lies my point.  I used to write once a week, then it turned into once a month, then once a year, now once every two years... and why?   Not sure exactly, as I have thought about it hundreds of times, but it seems to have gone directly in conjunction with the "improvement" in my quality of life.  If I was poor in 2007 I am filthy rich now, maybe not to a millionaire, but in my own mind at least.  Then again, a millionaire is not rich to a billionaire and so on and so forth, but to me, I am filthy rich.  In essence, I have all I need and much more.  Oops, I just got a text I had to respond to, just had to.  Therein lies the "much more", maybe too much?  Aahhh, the balance is so hard to achieve. 

Yes, you might say that it is because I am busy and that is a good thing.  Well then I must ask why?  At what point am I too busy?  At what point do I have enough wealth set aside to relax a little bit and take up what I would really love to do, to give back, to do the little things that I never had/made time for before... to get my sanity back?  Well then you have the other end of the stick where it just looks like laziness and lack of motivation.   Aahhh, the balance is so hard to achieve.

I have so many things.  I have obtained all kinds of cool items over the years, some small (ie pictures), some large (um, veggie bus.)  At what point do I decide to give things away or sell them?  What might I need in the future and what might I not?  I hear some say to get rid of as much as you can while others say it is good to double up on some possibly important items in a time of need and that it is better to have too much than too little.  Ugghh, the balance is so hard to achieve.

I do so many things.  I am a successful teacher/player of tennis and the bagpipes.  I love working on projects, like my veggie bus.  I love to (and frequently do) travel all over.  I have many friends I like to spend time with.  Now I have a wonderful wife that occupies my evenings and weekends whenever we get the chance to spend time together.  I like to exercise and stay in shape so often times I am doing a workout program.  I had two meetup groups that were successful in their own right, but I had to let them go.  They were just too much... occupied too much of my time.  And therein lies the point.  At what point is it too much?!  Daahhh, the balance is so hard to achieve.

Then there is that still small voice.  You all know, the one that gives me all the wisdom in life, if I would just listen.  Well, in all the noise of this hectic life, I don't take enough time to listen... and even if I did, would I be able to hear?  Sometimes I do, but do I have the time to write it down, to take note?  I tell you what, back then I did.  In 2007 when I had very little I did.

And herein lies the SOLUTION.  I must get rid of all things in my life that could possibly take away from me taking the time to listen to that still small voice.  I must also get rid of all the things that would keep me from hearing it in the first place.  This is where I currently stand... at the crossroads... with the kitchen sink on my back and a long road ahead...

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What I have learned so far is this, I need to LOVE... better... more... etc.  You know I have very much enjoyed reading my bible throughout the years... most of the time, but I think the main reason why I don't like to quote it very often is not so much that I don't know or love it like other books that I take quotes from, it is that I don't do what it says!  I simply fail so many times to even come close to the ultimate beauty that I read about in the bible.  I would be a big fat hypocrite to quote it, unless of course I put the preceding lines in fine print.  And herein I may be hitting a nail on the head... in the dark.  Maybe that is why many of us don't like to read/quote it.  We find it's light all too bright in the dimness that can sometimes be our life.  We find the guilt it might possibly create would be too large for ourselves to handle.  I may only be speaking for myself here, but either way, it is a point I am going to make.  Maybe I/we like to keep my/our life(s) so busy that we don't have time to hear that still small voice, because it might just tell us something we don't want to hear... at least that is what we, in our darkness, may believe.  I will stop speaking for others now, but myself only, because for me, this is the truth. 

In my own life I have found myself saying and doing things that I never could have foreseen myself doing even five years ago.  I do forgive myself for these things, but I have to ask myself where they come from, and most importantly, how do I kill them so they don't come back in my future.  I have come to the conclusion that they are a darkness in me that I have let creep up, mainly because of hushing that voice inside of me that sheds light into all darkness.  With that light and only with that can I kill that junk that pops up in my own darkness.  Light dispels darkness.

Easier said than done.


Signing off,

~ Nathan

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