OF WORDS AND DEEDS

The highest appreciation is not to utter words but live by them.—John F. Kennedy

 ______________________ 

Calculating by how fast the average human walks, there were just 2,160 steps between where my daddy sat at his desk inside Neiman Marcus and the spot where it is said that Kennedy was killed.

My four-year-old self recalls hearing the sobs of a daddy who arrived home hours later than typically expected, and I remember an all-encompassing dread overcoming us, like the monster under my bed had been released.

I’m not certain I comprehended on a cerebral level exactly what was going on. But my body understood everything, doing its best to protect me from the unfamiliar and unrelenting chaos that made its way into our home and City in the weeks and months ahead.

I am my father’s daughter. My passion for writing was first his. But on November 22, sixty years ago this week, I learned that it is our actions that those around us “listen to” the most.

Perhaps it’s because of my daddy’s lived-out example of this kind of integrity that JFK’s words have become one of my favorite quotes.

The most important quality we can offer the world isn’t something learned in some online course or seated in a conference hall. It is the mastery of ourselves—the cultivation of concrete convictions without space between what is valued and what is lived.

At a very early age, writing is where I began to unburden from big feelings inhabiting such a small frame. But I am still so often troubled about the space between what I say on paper and who I am in the world.

Does this sound familiar? How much space is between your beliefs and how you really want to live?

Words. And deeds.

Us, fully engaged,

Putting the all of us into every encounter.

Then [and only after all is done], being content with what is.

When we commit completely, only then comes real satisfaction and release. What a tragedy when we abdicate our power and then call it fate.

The same Creator of fingers and mouths that form the words, calls us to pour our whole selves into every encounter,

so that who we are online or on paper, is manifested in our homes, our cities, our Earth.

NOTES:

 PHOTO CAPTION: This is an advertisement for the Neiman Marcus Christmas Tie Collection written and modeled by my Daddy, James Knox, in 1963. Apparently he wore many hats [or ties] for the brand including Vice President overseeing the catalog division.

It was a busy November Friday morning sixty years ago this week. James Knox [my daddy] was in the midst of overseeing final edits for the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalog, 1963.

Printed on the newspaper laying next to his empty coffee cup the headline read, “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.”

 Just four minutes after passing Jim’s window overlooking the motorcade, John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

 In the aftermath, Dallas was dubbed, “The City of Hate.” It took decades of atonement by City leaders and luminaries to overcome the reputation.

That year the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book offered a genuine elephant-foot wastebasket ($350), and His and Her Beech-craft airplanes ($176,000) that were by today’s standards, sexist: His, a seven-seater corporate jet, cost $149,000; Hers a baby four-seater for a mere $27,000. Wrote a West Texas rancher: “I already have a plane, but if you will break the pair, I’d like one for the little woman, who has been hankering for a plane of her own.”

 MORE READING ABOUT WORDS:

https://www.sanctuaryliving.life/thejournal/livedexperience

https://www.sanctuaryliving.life/thejournal/theartofnoticingeverything

https://www.sanctuaryliving.life/thejournal/contagiousconversations

https://www.sanctuaryliving.life/thejournal/storyofmylife