Love and Brotherhood

Within our lives, it is clearly most important to have love and to be loved. Love can exist in so many different ways..... spouse to spouse, parent to child, child to parent, sibling to sibling, friend to friend. Each type of love is a true and very spiritual.

Sometimes I am envious about the passion and the ease at which my oldest brother (Frumpy Professor) lives life. He is able to weather storms and day-to-day worries with an ease and humor that I sorely lack.

A case in point that he has been chiding me about much of the last 10 years is pipe smoking. My brother is a consummate, proud, and vocal pipe smoker. He has a deep passion for the activity and is happy and content in his life that includes pipes. For me, it is a much different story. I do not usually talk about this subject, but I too am a pipe smoker, although I am not comfortable with that designation. For me, smoking a pipe is a beautifully spiritual event and yet, I have looming fears about smoking a pipe (health reasons), and I am exceedingly uncomfortable being labeled by society as a pipe smoker. Unlike my brother, I smoke only perhaps 2 - 3 times a day. Also, I never smoke inside my home or my family's vehicles. I also do not smoke in the presence of my children. There is a part of me that is ashamed, I believe. Ashamed to smoke, ashamed to smoke but be furtive about it, ashamed that I do not have the backbone or stamina to live life as "large" as others seem to do with ease. I believe that my discomfort stems a) from being from a different generational mindset from my brother (he is significantly older than I am), and b) from a general meekness I have had in my personality my whole life.

I am not sure why I am writing this today, but it is as I have written, and it has always been this way.

Konrad