FILL YOUR DAYS
Sunday Aug. 10, 2014
Fill them.
With delicious things, challenging things, hard things and easy things – mix it up.
Purpose isn’t mastered simply.
Because, when you try to make the day perfect something or someone will come along to mix it up for you, complicate it for you or simply urinate in your cornflakes …
So, don’t start the day with cornflakes – just to be safe.
You need some key.
The key?
To give and take.
If you give, I’ll take, or someone will.
Why not?
Giving and taking is rarely equitable or timely.
In a perfect world, give-take gates swing both ways without as much as a hinge squeak.
Such a strange saying, in a perfect world.
Would everyone not agree this is a perfect world?
Would we want a different one?
If we did, then that would be perfect, and this one wouldn’t be.
For now, let me make my point on the basis that THIS earth is a perfect world, that WE are perfect, and that EVERYTHING is wonderful.
One could argue that strife, pain, war and horrors of many kinds are going on right now, in many places – but try to stick with me here, on this notion that THIS is the perfect world.
It has bumps. Some are quite severe – some are temporary and some re-occur every time there is a tyrant or typhoon, disaster or coup, disease or volcanic eruption to wipe out some things, people and time. And then perfect world status returns until the next time.
Our moments of peace, smooth pavement and smooth sailing are many – just hard to see when we are in the middle of disaster du jour or crisis of confidence days.
Help is on the way, Our self … together with time, can mend every trouble, or not, without changing this world so much that anyone would notice.
Bumps in a road are not the end of that road.
Bumps – take up space between smooth parts, like arguments are in conversation, like though-wrestling is in our mind. To move smoothly from place to place, race to race is both uneventful and without tasting life. From rough patch to rough patch, from disaster to failure and back again, smooth pavement, smooth sailing, smooth flavour.
There are things, people and institutions who teach us everything we are supposed to know but cannot teach us what we need to learn. If we never learned to love, the answer is not in a book – it is found in loving. If we never learned to give, the answer is not in a lecture – if it found in giving. If we’ve never learned to save the world, the answer is not in a TED talk, the answer is in tossing a life-preserver to someone.
What can we do, in our short lives, to make differences in the world or in people – and why, if it is so futile, do we try to do that?
Is it because there is no point to life otherwise?
Everyone has their own answer to that one.
A while ago this page was the blankness of pre-creation. It wasn’t the moment before a big bang, wasn’t the moment before ingredients in some recipe or parts on an assembly line were pulled together.
It was just blank.
A page.
Empty.
Nothing.
As we are, every morning – simply vessels to be filled with this day so we can spill it out at the end in some form, with some meaning or value for someone.
Otherwise, why fill it?
Learning – seems to come from events, actions and circumstances. Learning life’s lessons shows up in experiences and accidents, in the middle of breakfast, middle of the day and middle of the night. Life is certainly uncertain and I cannot imagine a better way to start each day than by saying so, in some way.
Today, no different than yesterday. Still, any day that starts with pie for breakfast has to be special – especially so when pie was a gift someone made for me.
That’s sweet. Key lime sweet.
That’s the key …
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 12C/53F, a cool clear start to a hot day, Gusta wanted off-leash to chase that rabbit – completely ignoring that a chain-link fence separated her from her quest … she could see it, chase it but never get to it, which seemed somehow to be a metaphor for unmet goals, or rather for excuses around unmet goals. I’m not a dog, I’m not on a leash. And I’m not chasing an uncatchable thing …
Reader feedback / comments always welcome:
Considering the way your column started, I didn't expect the way you ended it. But I think you got it. Exactly, MO, Monterey, CA
If you stick to that thought, born tomorrow, does that mean you never get born? Born again is a term I hear often in certain circles. If we treat each birth day as a 'born again' day with new anticipation and virgin enthusiasm, then each year we don' grow another year older. What I really mean to say is "Happy Birthday to you! And many more!!" GW, Bon Wier, Tx.
