One Million

It looks like by tomorrow, I will have reached one million page views in the fourteen years I’ve published this Blog. That feels like a big-deal number and always one to mark occasions one way or another, I wanted this particular post to feel significant. 

 

A few weeks ago, I uncovered a poem I wrote to my daughters in 2006, the year Talia graduated from high school and Kerala graduated from college. Re-reading it I liked it and read it out loud to them while vacationing together in Palm Springs. And told them that they seemed to have taken my advice. Not that they listened to me, mind you, but simply kept flowering wholly into the stellar human beings they both are and exactly matched just about everything I hoped for them in these words. 

 

That’s as good a way as any to celebrate my one millionth page view and 4,400^th entry. Here it is:

 

ADVICE TO MY CHILDREN ON THE OCCASION OF THEIR HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE GRADUATION 

 

Don't hide your intelligence under a flag,

Don't cover your heart with religion.

Don't damage your spirit by shopping too much.

Hold fast to harmonious vision.

 

Do a kindness each day, lest the chance slip away,

To help someone who is in need.

Like a bird song in May, the piper may pay,

With a tune that has sprung from that seed.

 

The world I bequeath, both above and beneath,

And hope that you'll try where I've failed.

To set your sights high and don't fear to try,

To sail where no others have sailed.

 

Steer towards your dreams, but keep one eye on earth,

Have your vision serve you and the village.

Too many do scheme (most privileged by birth),

To gain profit by plunder and pillage.

 

So I bid you go forth, south, east, west and north,

And capture the world with your beauty.

Beauty of thought, beauty of deed,

Born from your joy and your duty.

 

Set your compass by love, and follow the dove,

Unfurl your sails billowed with art.

Wherever you go, this must you know.

That I carry you both in my heart.

 

-       2006