The Long Road Home...: A Philosophical Journey.
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About this ebook
As life winds down and the drone of existence begins to wane, I'm feeling an intangible desire or need to reach back into my past and reconnect with a by-gone time and people...living and/or dead. It feels like an elusive melody that seems distantly familiar, yet strange and unidentifiable.
If all the above sounds like a premonition of the inevitable, I agree and accept that my time is ticking away. But its not about dyingits about going home! Im not afraid of dying, but I do struggle with the reality that I will no longer physically exist.
I have to wonder if the term going home isnt a misnomer and maybejust maybe, were trying to return to Neverland (Fridays With Landon). When we were very young we searched for that elusive, utopian communityand studies have shown that in our declining years, we slowly revert to our childhood.
Another line-of-thought is that its all just a mirage. We know and accept that a man can be dying of thirst, in the middle of the driest desert, and his mind will anesthetize him by creating the illusion of an oasis. If we can acknowledge that phenomenon (the minds coping mechanism) then it shouldnt be much of a stretch to reason that the elderly possess those same innate coping capabilitiesto ease their journey home. Of course their mirage would be about going homenot to a place, but to another time.
What is the driver for this (apparently) universal pilgrimage? I have to wonder, even compare it to an addicts motivation (The Path to Addiction)one more trip down that path of pleasant memories even as the host is being sacrificed.
RICHARD MCKENZIE NEAL
About the Author: Richard McKenzie Neal One should never equate education and/or intelligence to wisdom… Richard was born in Hope, Arkansas (Bill Clinton’s boyhood home), in 1941 and his father was gone prior to Richard turning two years old. He never knew the man, but attended his funeral as a sixteen-year-old. Before boarding a Greyhound bus for California, at seventeen, Richard knew two stepfathers and a number of others who were just passing through. During those teen years, before succumbing to the beckoning allure of the outside world, Richard worked at an assortment of low-paying jobs. Summers were spent in the fields…picking cotton and/or watermelons and baling hay. He also worked as a plumber’s helper and a carhop at the local drive-in burger stand. After dropping out of school, eloping and landing in California, he soon realized how far out of his element he had ventured. And without the guidance of his “Constant Companion,” Richard would have spent a lifetime floundering in a sea of ignorance and ineptness…and his books would not exist. Richard’s first book (Fridays With Landon) was driven by his son’s life-altering heroin addiction. He had hoped not to author a sequel, but left the book open-ended due to historical concerns, which did in fact…resurface. For 25 years the family has endured the emotional highs and lows associated with the chaotic, frustrating and more often than not…heartbreaking task of rescuing one of their own, from the always ebbing and flowing tide of addiction. The unintended sequel (The Path to Addiction…) was triggered by a mind-numbing relapse after 30 months of sobriety. The second book was then written to bring closure…one-way or the other. The author advanced several possible scenarios for the ending of that book, but only one of those possibilities was favorable. His third book (The Long Road Home…) is a philosophical journey that we’ll all experience as our time here begins to dwindle. The fourth book (We the People) was driven by what he saw as the dismantling of America and the circumventing of its Constitution. Additionally, the ominous cloud of socialism and a New World Order looming over Washington motivated him to speak up, in spite of political correctness’ muzzle. This, the fifth book was written to confirm and document the realities of those fears and concerns chronicled in the preceding book. While those fears and concerns were driven by the current administration, his nightmare now is the possibility of that same administration being returned to office, for another four years, in 2012. He has grave apprehension regarding America’s future should the unthinkable happen. All five books were written after retiring from a rewarding, thirty-six years in the oil industry. Our success should be measured by what we gave up (what it cost us) to obtain it...and not by what we accomplished and/or accumulated.
Read more from Richard Mckenzie Neal
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