I’m in a better frame of mind today, not because all my problems have been solved but because I’ve decided not to try to solve them, at least not all at once right this minute. A little space is what I need. Some time to think about other things, things that calm my mind rather than agitate it. Spring training starts this weekend. That helps.

It’s a fine line. It’s a narrow path I walk, and not a straight one. I walked out along the rutted muddy driveway to pick up my mail this afternoon and found that some time during the day someone had yanked (or knocked) the mailbox out of the ground and propped it against the fence. In this case, though, I knew what to do. I called my landlord, and within fifteen minutes he was out there digging a new hole for the post that holds the box.

While he was working on that, the mailman came. I hustled out to get my mail just as the truck drove away. I asked Fred if the guy had told him where to put the box, and he said that it would be better back away from the road. Well, that would save it from getting bashed in by vandals and drunks, and it should satisfy the letter carriers, because I know they always use my driveway to turn around in. So in a way, it was a lucky set of circumstances that actually improved a chancy situation. Or at least that’s how, in my new frame of mind, I’m choosing to look at it.

So to sum up: I’ve evolved, and I’m free. Which leads me to today. I’ve been thinking about this date for the last few weeks, but I don’t really have anything new to say about Lincoln and Darwin. One freed the slaves and kept the union together, and the other invented modern scientific thought. And I think both kind of stumbled on their greatness, rather than looking for it, at least in the beginning. Of course, Lincoln was a politician, and so, in a certain sense, was Darwin, so maybe they didn’t stumble anywhere. Maybe they put themselves on a path that took them to where their greatness would be useful.