Stay hard. Stay hungry. Stay alive.

We'll sleep in the fields, we'll sleep by the river,

And in the morning we'll make a plan.

Well, if you can't make it,

Stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive

If you can,

and meet me in a dream of this hard land. 

- Bruce Springsteen

The weather cooperated more than I had expected it to cooperate yesterday morning.  I had not anticipated being able to go for a run.  But I was.  So I did.  I left my faithful canine running companion home.  I love running with Sam. Sometimes though I go without her so that I simply focus on the running and not on Sam.  Selfish, right?  If me revealing myself to be an asshole surprises you, then clearly you are new here.  Welcome. 

Anyway, as a residual effect of all the running I do with Sam, rarely now do I run with music.  Yesterday was a day without musical accompaniment.  

Sans iPod, the music that runs in and out of my mind serves as my soundtrack.  Yesterday morning, it was overcast and drizzling a little as I ran.  Among the songs that filtered in and out of my mind was Springsteen's "This Hard Land".  

For more than a half-century, Springsteen has dominated my life's musical jukebox.  These days, "This Hard Land" seems acutely appropriate and the charge in the final verse nothing less than a rallying cry:  

Stay hard.  Stay hungry.  Stay alive. 

Words to live by, indeed. 

-AK