The bass is pounding on a sticky summer day and the acoustic guitar rhymes with the melodies of stories told by the folk-singer Josh Ritter and I am loving it. I am here because someone shared the love of Josh’s music with me.

Broken relationship? Broken friendship? A lost acquaintance that you once hit it off well with? Life happens and people exit our lives. We all lose friends whether we can’t see eye to eye on important matters anymore or we may lose them because their time on this planet is up. Whatever the reason, it is the reality and part of the pain life dispels on us.

Let’s face it. It sucks to lose a friend but I ask you to take away “one good thing” from every relationship you had.

We can escape as winners if we learn or enjoy just “one thing”they taught us that we can take with us on our journey.

On my journey I happened to meet a Josh Ritter fan that I hung out with for a summer or two.

Prior to us meeting I only had three Josh Ritter songs in my repertoire and they were buried deep within my laptop and the only one I listened to was Josh’s cover of “The River” by Springsteen.

Sure enough this dear friend and I parted ways but not before she exposed me to the well-written words of Josh Ritters music.

Josh’s music influenced me enough I actually named a lucrative real estate company after one of his albums that served my partner and I well.

I enjoy his music so much I went to a sold-out show of his 1500 miles away with no ticket in hopes of finding one. Lucky me, someone handed me a free ticket as I approached the ticket-booth in the Rocky Mountains.

I love his writings to the point I am inspired to see the colors and the wonder of the Northern Lights when the time is right. He has lyrics, “All The other girls are stars you are the Northern Lights….”I can hardly wait to see who will be accompanying me to the gleaming green natural light-show over the Baltic Sea as I sing her those words with an enduring hug.

“All The other girls are stars, you are the Northern Lights” Such simple words yet so deep and this just an example of many of his many writings.

If this person stumbles across my writings on the web, I say thank you for turning me on to JR. You are a star.

My readers, I ask you, What “one thing” have you taken away from a person you knew and you can take it into your old age? Care to share?

What “one thing” Do tell, I just did.