W.E. Krill, Jr. M.S.P.C.

I’m officially a counselor, an artist, a gardener, a good cook, and a non-fiction writer, and a youth minister among many other things. I have honest to goodness potential to become a PhD, an artist with consignments, an organic farmer, a chef,  and a best selling fiction writer.  And then there are the things I still want to learn, like how make my own camper van, how to take a really good photograph; seeing how far I could hike on the Appalachian Trail. The problem, of course, is time and energy.

Dozens of research projects (mostly on PTSD in abused children) pop into my head almost weekly. There is a part of my brain that craves picking up the brush and creating a landscape on fresh water color paper. Springtime awakens the need to get my hands deep into rich soil. So many recipes pass through my vision, never to be prepared. Plot lines, full stories, and interesting characters enter my dreams, politely, but sometimes insistently asking to be put into the written word. God is calling me to expand my ministry role from just youth to families. The call of the hiking trail sounds like a haunting song in my heart, always there, always seducing.

Folks from time to time have conversations about human potential, often these are directed towards young people, encouraging them to ‘live up to’ their fullest potential. I’m not sure that we adults can justly give such advice to younger people, since I know that I have not met all of my potentials. I certainly, in hindsight, have wasted so much time in my life. And that knowledge and insight has tended to create in me a kind of sadness on the one hand, and a determination on the other.

I fully recognize that there are many potentials in my life that will never even be explored, let alone worked at (let alone met). But there still being a few decades left, (I hear the clock ticking ever louder) I need to come up with a plan to prioritize those things that will not only allow me to enjoy, explore, and meet as many of my potentials as possible, but also to leave some kind of legacy with some lasting value to others.

Waste time, waste potential. Don’t just indulge and satisfy yourself, do something that matters to the world and leaves it a better place because of your actions.