Every Day Is a New Path

We traveled a trail new to us yesterday afternoon in the Wayne Fitzgerrell Park at Rend Lake. There aren't many visitors yet this time of year. Walking among the many still-bare trees, the only sounds we heard for a while were squirrels scampering around and the moaning, creaking noise that tall trees make when the wind is moving through their tops. The scene might have seemed kind of melancholy were it not for the fat buds we spied on some sycamore trees, which seemed ready to literally pop open with fresh greenness. Before you know it, the litter of leaves will hardly be noticeable, and the park will once more be filled with families enjoying an outing at the lake.

I came across a poem today that expresses perfectly my motivation for starting on the path to a new career. It's too long to include all of it, so here is an excerpt:

I Shall Not Pass This Way Again: A Symphony

by Eva Rose York

I shall not pass this way again;

Then let me now relieve some pain,

Remove some barrier from the road,

Or brighten some one's heavy load;

A helping hand to this one lend,

Then turn some other to befriend.

O God, forgive

That now I live

As if I might, sometime, return

To bless the weary ones that yearn

For help and comfort every day,--

For there be such along the way.

O God, forgive that I have seen

The beauty only, have not been

Awake to sorrow such as this;

That I have drunk the cup of bliss

Remembering not that those there be

Who drink the dregs of misery.

I love the beauty of the scene,

Would roam again o'er fields so green;

But since I may not, let me spend

My strength for others to the end,--

For those who tread on rock and stone,

And bear their burdens all alone,

Who loiter not in leafy bowers,

Nor hear the birds nor pluck the flowers...