Born to Wonder (book excerpt)

This is from my upcoming book, Portrait of a Seeker, excerpted from correspondence with a friend.  I printed two sample copies of Portrait today; man is it big--it's a phone book!  A galley proof will come out next month (after proofreading and typesetting) and a first edition printing is scheduled for the first of December.  Contact me for more information. -DW  

I feel that I have lived my potential; I accomplished something that I was born to do. It was accomplished. Not by me. I’m not the director; I’m a bystander observer. I was born to be a dreamer, a wonderer of things. I’m not implying a designer’s intentions in my makeup, although it could be there. It is just apparent that I am a certain shape and color. Fat people are fat, etc. I have always, always looked for the deep, true meaning of everything. I always felt that IT, the answer, the real reality, was there, somewhere, but people seemed contented chasing after stuff that I was convinced they knew didn’t matter.



I had two things happen that drastically affected my course. My father’s death resulted in my innate curiosity and contemplative nature tilting off balance into a very extreme list of incessant questioning with my whole self, “What?” “What is this place?” What is the meaning of all this?” I was 18. After seven years spent in this direction, I ran across Richard Rose’s life example. I saw this guy who made a similar kind of ‘wondering’ his solo career. I felt, intuitively, that this, finally, was what I was supposed to do. I’d always felt this but had never before been encouraged in this direction. I was always the ‘odd one’ with my unorthodox ideas, questions and outlook. “That’s just Dave,” I’d hear from family and friends. After seeing this old guy’s life, I told myself that I could march to my own drum and I made an abrupt left turn (reference to my being left-handed) and never, never looked back. I finally was going in my own direction.