Don Kuhl and Mentors - The Monday Morning Memo

“As I age, I think I grow smarter about who I choose to spend time with. If I could go back in time, I believe I would chase after folks who could mentor me on getting wiser and kinder each day. Those people were all around me, but I think they scared me off. I was worried they would find out what a loser I really was. Instead, I hung out in bars searching for patrons who might think I was pretty special.

It took me more years than it should have to recognize how many great people were all around me. I didn’t need to impress them. I just needed to listen to them.”

– Don Kuhl, Sept 21, 2018

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THERE IS NO WORD

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack that should have been bagged in double layers—so that before you are even out the door you feel the weight of the jug dragging the bag down, stretching the thin plastic handles longer and longer and you know it’s only a matter of time until the bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word for that vague sensation of something moving away from you as it exceeds its elastic capacity—which is too bad, because that is the word I would like to use to describe standing on the street chatting with an old friend as the awareness grows in me that he is no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance, a person with whom I never made the effort—until this moment, when as we say goodbye I think we share a feeling of relief, a recognition that we have reached the end of a pretense, though to tell the truth what I already am thinking about is my gratitude for language—how it will stretch just so much and no farther; how there are some holes it will not cover up; how it will move, if not inside, then around the circumference of almost anything—how, over the years, it has given me back all the hours and days, all the plodding love and faith, all the misunderstandings and secrets I have willingly poured into it.

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- Tony Hoagland, “There is No Word,” Application for Release from the Dream (2015)

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