Dear Lizzie Mae,
One day I found myself relaxing in front of the fireplace at the Mendocino Hotel in Mendocino, California. Established in 1878, the Mendocino Hotel has the look of old run-down buildings I've seen in a thousand western movies.
The town sits above the waters of the Pacific Ocean along the gorgeous Northern California coastline, where one can hear the surf and the seagulls; where one can smell the rich aroma of salty breezes flavored with dried kelp accompanied by an occasional whiff of dead fish. In the waning hours of the day if you stand on the veranda of the building looking west, you absorbs the beauty of the sunset over the purple Pacific horizon.
My job paid me well into six figures at this time in life.
The money, the luxury, the calories. I wondered if it was right. Not to make excuses for myself, but this was new for me. I had never lived like this. Oh, there have been times when I have lived well. Not too many years ago, Southern California was a fine place to live, and in particular, the town of Avalon on Catalina Island, (population approx. 1500 -- at that time), and again in Virginia, and then maybe a few times before. But never had I known such affluence as I did sitting in that comfortable over-stuffed chair feeling the warmth of the fire.
Watching the flames jump back and forth, I thought about the job and the money. I thought about the lives Bonnie and I were living. I wondered about all of this we are doing. And at any moment I know that it could be taken away.
I've had life's hiccups like everybody else. Sometimes I think maybe a little more than everybody else. But that isn't true. There is enough fire to go around for us all to walk through in this life.
But I have learned (I think) that there is a lot more to life than it's troubles or it's pleasures. The love and pursuit of money will bring us to the brink of a tar pit. Have you ever been to the LaBrea tarpits? Hundreds of pre-historic animals are buried in that stinky mess. Not a pretty place. Don't think I'll ever go back.
Well, enough about me and my prognostications. What about you dear reader?
Years ago, someone came up with the "brilliant" cliche: "It's a matter of perspective." I suppose there is always an element of truth in a cliche, and that is usually all we consider. But as with any issue, the macro meaning finds it's denouement in personal experience, hence, as Puddlegum puts it . . .
"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder.
I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have.
Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.
Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow.
That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.
So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say." -- C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
The up-scale restaurant in the Mendocino Hotel provides the best hot-fudge sundae on the planet. I swear I couldn't figure where they found chocolate that tasted like that. It had to be anointed! (Prolly' came from Narnia.)
