Witness To Your Life
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Most of us have heard the phrase "they really knew me" — but rarely stop to consider what that truly costs us when it's gone. ----- What Does It Mean to Have a Witness to Your Life? Strange question, I know. But it surfaced at my mother-in-law's funeral this past Monday in Raleigh, and I haven't been able to shake it. A childhood friend of my wife's pulled her aside. "I'm sorry," she said. "Your mother was a witness to your life. Losing her is hard." I had never heard that expression before. And the weight of it hit me somewhere I wasn't prepared for. If we're lucky, we have...
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Busy Hands
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
There’s sad news at Cam’s house. Friends are reaching out to help his family through their grief. Losing a loved one is never easy and friends just want to help by doing something. ----- Busy hands surround my wife and me these days. Recent bad news has brought the need for friends to reach out and want to help us get through it. “I’m so sorry,” they say. “What can I do?” Our reply, just like most people’s is “Nothing. Thank you. We’re all set.” And they reply with, “Well, let me at least bring dinner.” The need to do something to feel helpful. The need for busy...
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Purpose
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam’s been studying retirement trends for his work lately. One thing’s for sure, he’s not ready! ----- More often than not, when I ask someone who has retired in the past two years, their answer is nearly exactly the same. They say, “Well, retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” Why? They worked so hard for it, now they have it. So, what’s missing? My work has steered me into retirement studies. Most people think about money when they think about retirement planning, but I’m learning money is not the only thing you need to plan for. There’s more. And it’s something...
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Carnival Cruise Ship Crashed Into the Dominican Republic
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin’ It Real, Cam has been away lately but just got back from Spring Break with his kids. Imagine a cruise ship wrecked on a beach and they turned it into a hotel…. ----- Imagine a Carnival Cruise ship out at sea and loaded with passengers headed full speed, for the coast of the Dominican Republic and crashing ashore not far from Punta Cana. Then, rather than clean up the mess, they turn wreckage into a hotel, add a bunch more swimming pools and put loud Bose speakers everywhere, and call it the Hard Rock All-Inclusive Sodom and Gomorrah Resort and Hotel Punta Cana....
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Ant Farm
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam has learned that there are moments in time where a simple guttural sound really really matters. And they can’t accumulate because they expire quickly. All this relates back to an incomplete Christmas present. ----- I got an ant farm for Christmas. My kids laughed and they told their friends and they laughed but my family came through and on Christmas morning I opened an ant farm. It has a main chamber and two auxiliary chambers. I set it up just like the pictures showed. A few weeks ago, in March, I got the ants for my birthday. Apparently, the farm...
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AI Me?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam has been pitched by a software company to duplicate himself. Who would want another of him? Even he questions his own worth from time to time. ----- I’ve just come from my accountant’s office where I handed all my tax information to the lady at the front desk. The manilla envelope was much lighter this year than in years past. Last week I had a long talk with an AI guy out of Houston. He said he loved to find people like me – content experts with books and videos and training programs and blogs and podcasts and such. He wants to take all content...
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Lenten Commitment
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam realizes that he really had no choice over what he gave up for Lent - it was given to him and he's not happy about it. ----- Our new puppy continues to rule the house and my life. She was trained by the breeder to urinate on a pee pad which is exactly what it sounds like – an absorbent mat for dogs to urinate on indoors. At our house, that means the carpet. She’ll trot off the hardwood floors, pass the open back door to find the Persian rug and squat and look at me with an expression of “look how good I am!” Meanwhile the whole yard in available...
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Another Tree
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam wonders what the life span of a titanium knee is and whether his father might need one or two more with the way he’s going. ----- My eighty-nine-year-old father is scheduled to get a knee replacement next week. Let me say that again - he’s eighty-nine and getting a new knee and is eager to return to his very active life when the pain subsides. He’s done this once before and wants the same results. People stop me nearly every day to ask about my father. They comment on how healthy he is and how he never slows down. This is true, though I can...
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In On the Joke
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
In a few coastal cities in the deep south, in the weeks before Lent begins, a strange behavior begins to appear. Honorable and respectable people step into a different personalities for a short time. They do it together, and it's a heck of a good time. ----- Grown people acting like fools for a few days might very well be good for the soul. I’m not sure how large groups, primarily of men, agreeing to behave silly is therapeutic, but it is. I’ll leave it to some psychologist try to explain it. As a participant, though, I assure you, it’s good stuff. Over the top costumes, over the...
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He Claims to Know
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam Marston admits that from time to time when he’s on his knees at church on Sunday he asks himself what in the world he’s doing. Has he, maybe, lost his mind. ----- The Mayan god of rain was called Cha ac. When drought hit the jungles of Central America fifteen hundred years ago, Cha ac was called upon to send rain. So, the Mayans, led by their shaman, offered a child – children, actually. The archeologists who studied Bartlett Cave in Belize say they found the bones of eighteen children in one area alone, and there were many areas. None of the children...
info_outlineShe hopped to the edge of the platform, raised her arms, and jumped.
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The video opened on my phone and my daughter was leaping off a bridge and falling out of the frame. It took my breath away. I watched it again and texted her. “Since you sent this to me,” I said, “I assume you survived the fall?”
“Yea,” she texted back. “It was awesome.”
She’s in South Africa as I write this. She’s spent the month there with a student group called Lead Abroad. It’s a one-month trip where she and about thirty others study leadership and communication skills while experiencing the adventures that the host nation has to offer. The day she sent the video they were bungy jumping off Bloukrans Bridge. I watched as she walked to the edge of the platform, raised her hands over her head, bent at the knees and leapt forward, falling into the abyss. It was hard to watch but I was so proud of her.
I had no idea how much I’d enjoy her being on this trip and it’s mainly because she’s eating up every opportunity that’s come her way. There is nothing she’s not tried with a wide-open spirit, no question she’s not asked, not experience she’s passed up from the food, to the native face painting, to the safaris, to the paragliding, to the shark diving, to the bungy jumping, she’s done it all. Each of her messages home are full of energy.
I’m proud of her. She’s worked hard for the trip. She’s saved money for a few years to afford it. Her summer jobs gave her a little spending cash but most of her earnings went into savings. She does small decorative signs for friends at college for a little pay and saves some of that, too. My wife and I and her grandparents have her helped a small bit, but this is largely her doing. She’s experienced the satisfaction of hard work, disciplined savings, patience, and the fulfillment of it all paying off – a lesson I didn’t learn till much older.
There’s still another part to my pride. It’s watching a child take risks, meet new people, try new things well outside her comfort zone, and thrive through it all. Right now, my wife and I have a child who has confidence in herself, confidence in her social skills, confidence in her risk taking and all that. And that’s no small thing with young adults today. This experience will become the ground for more experiences like it; for her not being afraid to get outside her comfort zone. From what I see and hear right now, she’s truly living life. It’s a delight to see.
Parenting continues to surprise me. Things that my children do that I thought would have no impact on me end up taking my breath away. Other things that I thought would be momentous become unremarkable. I need to stop making predictions about what I’ll do and how I’ll feel when certain moments arrive and just experience them in their fullness.
Which is exactly what my daughter is doing right now on her hard-earned trip to South Africa.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.