making sense of things

Yesterday's fat and fetid stranglehold let go in the overnight rain and today is more humanely cool... easier to think, easier to move, easier to be.

While my older son, who graduated from college last month with good marks in computer wizardry, is chewing the inside of his mouth looking for some kind of work, my son-in-law is awash in job offers in his chosen field of engineering.

The latter has held several jobs, each better paid than the last, since he got out of college a couple of years ago. On the one hand, it's a delicious predicament -- which job to take. On the other, I wonder whether someone who skips from job to job is a desirable employee.

Isn't there something to be said for the wisdom gained and quality produced through sticking with something? "That's not the way the game is played these days," my wife said. And she is probably right, but there is something flimsy about it in my mind, something that doesn't speak well for whatever the product is... butterfly executives sipping briefly at one flower before moving on to sip at another. They will tell you things are getting "better," but the product itself often tells a quite different tale...everything sleek and smooth and tinny.

As a personal matter, I think it is good to do one thing well. It doesn't matter what the one thing is. It matters that for once a person puts heart and soul into something and sees it through. It is not a matter of rounding up applause and agreement and comforting company: Heart and soul are beyond social pleasures.

Just one thing.

For once.

Because that one thing will make sense of everything else.