7am, air warm, thick and balmy. The 1/2 empty holiday parking lot is a clear sign of summer setting. An hour on the water covering ground with my young friend, jetty to pier n back, steady out, spirited intervals all the way home. Water glassy and tropical, the warm breeze light and sweet. Hours before I was due at the dojo, the sweet spot to celebrate the totality of a  fading summer a

It was truly a perfect morning after a perfect season. By perfect I don’t mean an uninterrupted series of positive events, I mean a thick set of adventures, challenges, victories, disappointments, welcomed and unwelcome change and a net some gain of expanded and opened heart and mind.

If we change the way we view work/challenge/labor, the labor changes. True with just about anything, how we frame things  defines the things themselves.

I am a student at heart and because of that, Labor Day and the day after means a set of new beginnings. We can stick with the old, the way we’ve viewed and defined our situation, opportunities or lack there of or… we can reset how we view them and approach them.

It’s time to head off to the dojo, I have the privilege of punching the clock for a few hours on this Labor Day Monday. I’m not going to work, I’m going to teach and to learn.

So thankful for all of you and all of the people who use their bodies and brains to make this great land better. Clergy, cops, doctors, lifeguards, maintenance… each playing their critical part no matter how small.

I hope your summer was great and that the transition to fall would be even more inspiring and fruitful in your successes and in your challenges.

Friendship, Strength and Honor,

PCD