The night is warm, the moon is full, and my head buzzes heavy with the Thoughts That Come Unbidden as the Department works overtime. I can’t sleep. I could weave a tapestry of $3 words and phrases like “dark night of the soul” and “vision quest” but the reality is this: Life is hard and it isn’t always fun.
- People you love die unexpectedly and too young.
- People who say they love you and will forever stop talking to you and leave you hanging wondering what you did wrong, wondering what about you it is that is suddenly so repellant as to cause such a shift in feeling.
- You act on impulse, thoughtlessly, and do things that hurt the people you love.
- Bosses abuse your time paying you not quite enough for just a little bit too much work.
- The fix is in on prices, rents, gas and electric, and the little guy (that’s you) can never seem to get more than a couple of days ahead before something else goes wrong.
- And somewhere along the line we all got this idea that we have to be happy all the time, perfectly comfortable, never needing help and always striving, always giving 110% to reach a dream that may (or may not) be achievable.
Yet, life can also be brutally, stunningly, surprisingly beautiful, so beautiful, in fact, that the breath rushes right out of you and you feel as if your heart might stop.
- Violets trying to crowd out the grass in an early spring lawn.
- Turning the corner and realizing that those dead sticks you’ve been looking at on this block all winter and wondering why they haven’t been uprooted have bloomed in yellows, purples, and reds so shocking after the gray and black of winter.
- The shriek and smile of the toddler as she chases after a squirrel and stands puzzled looking up the tree as the squirrel chatters back its outrage from 15 feet in the air.
- Kites suspended seemingly motionless overhead tethered to the Earth by invisible lines of twine as they make you feel what it must be like to live in one of those water and glitter filled souvenir globes.
Life is full of passages, some marked by official recognition with mortarboard hats, special dresses, and expensive parties. Most of those passages, though, happen to us without our even noticing and it is the not noticing that is the crime not the changing. Changing is inevitable. The key is to be aware and to shape that change as much as it shapes you.