Live with expectancy instead of expectation that’s the challenge I give in almost every presentation I make.  Smile and the world smiles with you!   Happy face, Happy place.  I write about it!  I challenge other people to live it!    But in a split second I can slip into the same old patterns I so badly want to shed.  

People often ask me, “Ken, how do you get up and do comedy and present a message of hope on those nights when you don’t feel funny and you not exactly bubbling over with enthusiasm?

I am going to give you my answer in my next blog, but I want to hear from you first.  Benjamin Franklin said, “Many men die at 25 and aren’t buried until they are 75.”  How do YOU keep from throwing in the towel. How do YOU stay out of  “The Box?”

Today I woke up early determined to run up the mountain to two beautiful lakes. This is exercise at it’s best and I was committed to reaching the lakes in less than an hour. The route is all up hill amid towering pines paralleling a rambunctious stream.  As I labored upward there was only one thing on my mind.  Make the trip in 60 minutes.  Okay, I was also thinking of oxygen. 

Not long ago I found myself living in a physical, spiritual, emotional and social coma.  I should have had a big Z for Zombie branded into my forehead.

A series of events starting with an eye opening look at what I had allowed to happen to my body and culminating with the horror of losing my beloved 4 year old granddaughter in the mountains of Colorado, started my recovery from living in the depressive staleness of just “making a living,” to breathing the fresh air of living “Fully Alive.”

The other day a friend asked if I could recall my very first memory. I thought it was losing my teeth, but Diane reminded me that happened just last year.

The search became quite an interesting quest.  When you open doors to the past, you often find yourself in rooms with other doors slightly ajar.  Those doors lead to other rooms and older memories. Many wondrous and some magical moments are uncovered until finally you are at the last door.

When that door creaked open for me, I was standing beside a large radio.  I’m talking large! This thing was a piece of furniture, the size of a desk that also contained an LP record player.