Author: Richard Carter
As the coffee percolates or the bed sheets are made down at night we are, at some time, alone with not the image of ourselves supported by our friends and family, but the true tale of our lives.
In those moments as still as a churches sanctuary after the doors has been locked, we can and often do walk through the museum of events and decisions that our pasts define.
At least for me, I find that what lines the wall, though hoarded in the moment and locked away as treasures, now seem to lack the luster they once had. Maybe this is because of the gaps between these treasures of the mind, the empty spots along the walls.
These are the ones that once held true treasures, ones unconsciously discarded, lost in neglect, trying to ever be watchful for a path to the next goal, one we reckoned as a heart’s desire, or one valued by others.
Like water rolling across ancient slabs of stones in a stream the names and the faces pass across us, each one cutting that minutest of grains from us. Some of these treasures are difficult to acknowledge, loved ones lost, not through the natural expectancies of life and death, but through statements and attitudes more important at the time than the feelings of those lost.
But we are all the same right? It is to be expected that man and woman will have goals and these must have some level of priority. They must have their time. But men and women live and die by their crutches, sight numb to theirs children coming and going, mesmerized not by the beauty in the last moments of their innocence, but by a game show.
Lust , gluttony , self-indulgences of all kinds both mental and physical set the stage for loss, awaken others to what must feel a distancing , in those semi drugged moments by TV, booze, cigarettes and our own revelries. The statements fall from our lips, impatient, demanding, and insensitive.
The mind receiving these has no safety measure for its own happiness in turn, but to assume (wrongfully much of the time) that they are not an essential element in this person’s life, and maybe never have been.
Illogical as these overly sensitive reactions might seem, they are the resulting avalanche we set in motion. Soon relationships built on the sweetest of loves fall into disrepair that neither has the energy nor will to look to. Soon husbands and wives, parents and children, have rents in the fabric of the earth of their relationships, too frightening to cross.
In those silent moments we remember our children and lost ones. Tiny clips of their smiling faces touch the same part of us that allowed us to love them unquestionable from the first kiss, and from their first cry, breathing in new life in our arms.
We were meant to grow and adapt and spread the blood of our families through more souls to love, but we were also, I truly believe, meant to do this by never breaking bonds, never closing doors.
The accomplishments we pile at our feet are the baubles in the eyes of other men. They are the laurel wreaths we use to show the measures of ourselves, but each leaf about that simple band has a cost. Each is traded for something vital in us and too us.
As the first sips of coffee arouse you to the day or you stop in that doorway in memory at night, maybe it’s time to, not only acknowledge our losses, but in that regret, plan better for the coming day, a positive morning.
Positive Mornings 