"Mom, you're getting old, please stop working overtime," I lightly scolded. "Besides, don't you ever get bored?"

She candidly responds in Vietnamese: "How can you be bored when you have a purpose?"

The matter-of-factness took me back. It startles me even now in its simplicity, especially because she truly believes it.

And that's my mother. A 5'2" Vietnamese woman who quips wisdom and whimsy without knowing she does either. Working since she met her sponsor family at age 18, still working every hour she can get her hands on. Hotels, sewing factories, engineering facilities, her GED. Mother's come a long way since she's hit these shores.

"I get tired. But then I remember. The tiredness goes away when you have vision."

As a modest woman she's paid her dues to the open opportunity presented by this country. She doesn't see her working days ending anytime soon and still, she works hard. Because damnit there's just no other option. This is life.

Even as her kids are rounding well past a life's quarter, "I work for the family," she tells me. Talk about realigning perspective.

The old adage, "follow your dreams," was only half right.

The saying should be "Follow through with your dream."

That's the only way to get things done.

The Spaces Between Your Fingers Project (The SBYF Project) has a simple mission: reconnecting. Tangibly with your senses, with rewarding awkwardness and fresh supplication. Digital preservation and sharing of wisdom between generations may make sense for posterity, but collecting wisdom the old fashioned way, that makes sense for the soul.

And so it made sense Matthew Ross Smith wanted to share his POSTCARDS live. I'm glad he did. Having heard the EP in all it's stages, it wasn't until Friday night's performance that I realized Matthew's objectives to help reconnect was as much to reconnect with ourselves as it was to reconnect with others. When we go out to shake hands and share stories we are forced to constantly reflect and assess the wisdom gained and the wisdom given. This is conversation.

What would you say if you had the chance to send a message back to a previous version of yourself? What would you do then had you known what you knew now? And would you be the same person if a “future you” saved you from heartache, but spoiled all the mystery? The fun of POSTCARDS is in it's ability to invoke these questions. Matthew may have written them for himself, but the postcards speak to everyone.

If you missed out on the release party, you can always head over to matthewrosssmith.com for a chance to hear an artist reflect on such things in his own way. On the road putting faith in strangers, in the idea they all had something to teach him, he learned to also put the question to himself. His postcards, the music acting as his reminders of where he’s been, of where he’s headed, was his way of doing it. And in the process having some fun.