Good Morning,

The other morning I was sitting on the back patio taking in the
trees, breeze and sunshine when something caught my wandering eye.
Perched atop our terra cotta chimnea was a small plastic flower pot.
It was fairly new and caught the sunlight just right turning it's
surface into a shiny almost mirror like finish. The pot was empty and
my wife was saving it for another planting. Upon closer examination I
saw a tiny lime green inch worm gently perched on the lip of the vessel.

My little lime green friend seemed to be resting, as though he had
travelled some great distance to get where he was or quite possibly
survived and incredible journey to arrive on the lip of this shiny
pot. Then as I gazed on, the little worm began doing his inch worm
thing and headed out, making his way around the lip of the pot. The
edge upon which he tread was no wider than his own tiny body and yet
he walked it like a master. Each motion producing the characteristic
"inch worm hump" which I accompanied with squeak toy sounds in my
head (squeak, squeak, squeak).

As I watched him circle the pot like a small train (whoo, whoo!) it
became apparent to me why I thought he seemed to be tired. . . he had
been going around and around the lip of this pot for hours! As I
continued to watch I could see that from his unique and tiny
viewpoint the gentle curve of the circular pot was more like a slow
bend in the road to him. No matter where he was on the lip it seemed
that whatever he was looking for (food, freedom, a friend?) was just
around the curve! So he kept inching his way around and around and
around.

How many of us do the same thing in our own lives? We keep circling
around the wheel of life searching for the same old things and
thinking that if we just hang in there for one more round we will
find what we are looking for. We endure incredible odds to go around
the lip one more time, only to discover that we still have not found
what we seek or if we are lucky, we realize that we are right back
where we started (the circle becomes visible). Like the small inch
worm, we can do this until our death and never realize we were going
in circles, or we can wake up and find another more productive means
of living our life.

As for my little friend. . . I watched him make several more laps at
which point I placed a small twig on the lip to indicate a starting/
ending point for the little feller. After one lap with the twig in
place, he realized that he had been there before, at which point he
shot out a small web and lowered himself off the edge to the warm
ground below. Funny how just a little reminder in his path stopped
this endless cycle. Even more intriguing is that it's not all that
different for us.

Have a beautiful experience and carry this thought - Repetition does
not transform a lie into a truth or fantasy into fact, it simply
occupies the mind and consumes time that could be better spent.

Peace and Love, Jim