Success Is When You Win

The Pelican

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His mouth can hold more than his belly can,
He can hold in his beak,
Enough food for a week!
I'm damned if I know how the hell he can!

-Dixon Lanier Merritt, a Southern newspaper editor and President of the American Press Humorists Association, penned this famous limerick in 1910. It is carved in stone and displayed prominently at Brook Green gardens in SC.

Watching several Pelicans feed in the tributaries of Murrells Inlet, SC, I was taken by how often they fail to catch fish. It is fairly easy to mark a successful dive, as the stately bird will raise its beak skyward to send the fish wiggling down its gullet. I began keeping score. I counted a total of twenty five dives between four birds and could only verify a catch seven times. With a slightly better than 25% success rate, these gobbling fowl still are known as great fishers.

I guess nature confirms the old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

1. Hunger for something will keep you trying.
2. The pain of failure is quickly forgotten once the benefits of success arrive.
3. Never give up.

A Different Kind of Flirt - God at Play

There is always much more.

In each combination
a savoring nuance blended from that moments ingredients
Do you hear that...  that unknown laugh?
It makes me smile.
Who is that?
Even in the mundane, methodical rhythm of talking
we stumble
on the euphoria
of an additional smile
an amalgamation of chemical strokes and spiritual caresses
as if we should have been here all along.
There seems to be more, always.
More to know, feel, grasp, share...

God is such a flirt.