Quote of the Week...from James T. Kirk

The answer is "no"...I, therefore, am going anyway.     

---Admiral James T. Kirk, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 

I was always a big fan of the Star Trek original television series...it pained me that early on in its run my parents insisted on watching Bewitched on our one TV set from 8 to 8:30 Thursdays, directly opposite hour-long Star Trek's first half.  So, for some time I knew a lot of episode endings, but not what led up to them.  After finally realizing what a popular cash cow the series was, somebody had the sense to start a movie Star Trek series, albeit more than a decade after the original series was unceremoniously cancelled in 1968.  The third of these, The Search for Spock, is the sequel to the second, The Wrath of Khan, in which Leonard Nimoy's character Spock willingly sacrifices his life to save the starship Enterprise and her crew.  Unknowing of Spock's Vulcan customs, Kirk (played by William Shatner) releases his friend's casket to a soft landing on the strange, distant planet Genesis. Later Spock's father berates him for not reuniting the body with Spock's spirit, which he had given Dr. McCoy (Deforest Kelly)... yeah, I know this is getting a little weird.  Long story short, Kirk wants permission from his superiors in Star Fleet to return to Genesis and retrieve Spock's body...but he is denied because of the controversy surrounding that planet.  So, he walks up to his all-star skeleton crew and delivers the above quote.  I used it today because, well, in life sometimes you have a decision to make, and sometimes it goes in the direction of defiance and not compliance.  As individuals each of us has choices that can determine where we want to go in our respective lives.  It may be tempting to look "sideways" at someone else who is taking a different path than us, especially when that path seems to keep crossing our own from time to time.  Then it's tempting to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and to begin to doubt our own resolve.  I can guarantee you this: no matter what you do or not do, there is always somebody out there who will criticize your decision, and sometimes even get nasty about it.  Then again, on the positive side of all this, there's another "Jim" I'd like to quote: the musician Jim Croce, who sang in his hit I Got a Name, "I've got a dream, I've got a dream.  Oh, I know I can share it if you want me to.  If you're going my way, I'll go with you"...