You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Finding Life’s treasure map.
Most of us are searching for something. Maybe it’s gold, maybe it’s peace, maybe it’s enlightenment.
It’s life’s reward.
Some of us are pirates on a vast sea searching for the Holy Grail. Maybe it’s on an island in the middle of an uncharted island. Maybe it’s at the bottom of Davey Jones’ locker.
The treasure is there. But rarely is it is easy to find.
In children’s story, there are big black dashes on old parchment that show the way. It’s a circuitous route, perhaps a peregrine route, but it’s clearly defined so even a child can follow the map to the big X and pot of gold.
But life’s treasure doesn’t come with a map.
So we move forward without direction, without obvious guidance, taking clues from the cosmos, from the spiritual beyond, from friends and neighbors and the weird disillusioned guy on the bus.
So if X marks the spot, how do you find the X?
1st you must believe that there is an X. 2nd you must believe you will find it. Some people don’t ever think about the X. To them there is no treasure, life has no rewards.
Some people wander aimlessly through a haze, stumbling toward whatever’s next.
If you give up on the search, then you give up on the dream.
You might as well be that disillusioned guy on the bus.
That’s why treasure sometimes remains lost for ions. The clues were lost, the desire to find the clues non-existent.
So the key is to believe, to have purpose, to know that you are on a treasure map with clues that lead you to the X that marks the spot.
Embrace the search.
FIND THE X!
They say Life’s a journey, not a destination.
While that’s true, at some point, you want to arrive at the X.
It’s like riding a train that never pulls into your station. You can look out the window at the changing landscape your whole life, but at some point you have to disembark.
I’m on that Life’s Crazy train right now. I’m hunting for the X and it’s time to get off the train.
It’s time to forge a relationship with a company that understands Life’s Crazy. For me, this is where X marks the spot.
A licensing deal that will bring this brand to a department store near you.
The problem has been getting to the station, even figuring what train to ride. If you can’t find the right train tracks, how will you ever find the station that is next to the farm where the X is buried under a hay stack in a field of a billion hay stacks?
I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours searching for this clue. What train? What field? What hay stack?
Someone show me a damn X! It’s hard to find.
I feel like I’m Nicholas Cage in National Treasure. I know that the words Nicholas and Cage don’t inspire greatness, but that movie speaks to me.
My X is out there and I have been walking on a treasure map for years trying to find the X
How many times have I walked by the X? Have I kicked the leaf concealing the rock that’s on top of the X? Was I a moment away from the X and just didn’t know it? Or have I been a thousand train stations from the tracks that lead to the place where the X is hiding.
That’s National Treasure. One clue after another clue. And sometimes, most times, those clues are not readily seen.
In a Nicholas Cage movie, X marks the spot comes after a lot of careful deduction and a lot of luck.
Cage will be in a library and he’ll stumble into a book shelf. An old manuscript will fall to the floor and open to page 109. Magically the clue will stare Cage right in the face.
How many times had Cage looked in that library for that clue? Had he ever been in the library before? Would he have found the clue had he not bumped into the book shelf? What if the fortuitous Gods of luck didn’t open the book to page 109?
And that’s how life is sometimes. Sometimes X marks the spot can happen when you least expect it. Sometimes your clue is found in the very material that you were looking at but didn’t see.
Maybe someone else looks at the same hay stack and says, “hey, look at that haystack. Is that an X?”
That’s what I have come to realize. Life’s a journey, but the destination is also important.
Sometimes finding the X that marks the spot takes another set of eyes.
Sometimes the clue you found on page 109 puts you on the train that takes you to the station near the farm that has the haystack with a big giant X.
X marks the spot.
Nick Cage always knew it was there.
Now if I can just find my X.
Life’s Crazy™