STRIPPED AWAY
Monday Dec. 29, 2014
When to start?
We don’t review our year, or lives March 8th, April 3rd, June 12th, September 14th – we do it at year’s end, turning another calendar page.
2014, falling away, falling behind.
Falling to ground like clothes from mannequins.
Naked, cold, alone.
Afraid, at next cliff’s edge.
Avoid?
Leap?
Try, risking failure, or simply not try anything?
In a year, rundowns will reflect what’s been done, who accomplished what, why it mattered. Or why it didn’t.
If life is our newspaper, what will we read next year?
News flashes, records set, standards met, triumphs?
Take away our advertising, fluff and camouflage – what is left?
Not everyone has 365 days in 2015. Some have less.
If you knew (actually, you do) time was running out, what would you do that day?
It’s harsh outside.
Cold, bleak, harsh for everyone – but mostly so for those who are weak.
Feel for them. We are them.
Just as they are us.
Are we not just street-corner beggars, Bay Street moguls, impoverished ones, privileged ones and forgotten ones? Poverty and wealth are neighbours, in our own pockets too.
Cannot value what we’ve never been without.
Morning papers, empty of much news. Year-end reviews, top stories, top movies, top sports bloopers, empty skeleton.
Blank pages, without ideas or purpose.
This is us.
Me, you, all of us.
Strip away fluff and waste. Little left.
Within them rests one-day obits.
Entire lives, flipped by. Glanced over.
Hundreds of years of learning, working, giving/taking, making it through life’s bleakest times, and its most triumphant.
Everything stripped away, separated from best-of lists, we’ve done little, compared to what we can.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: -17C(wind-chill of -29C)/2F, a little more snow and far better traction, traffic-light, activity-light, most of the world still vacationing …
Reader feedback:
Home, that resonates with me today. Am 66 recently. Until they died when I was mid twenty or so-would drive from Memphis to a small town in Arkansas & go home to my parents for a weekend . We would talk, cook, would come back here & feel "better". I work, live in a highrise apt. Divorced, never had children, regret that now. Have a sister who lives out west, she has a husband, they have their own life, their own problems. Sometimes I wake up & in those half asleep/not quite awake moments, think, I wish I could go home for the weekend. Well my adult self knows there are not enough really close friends, a little depression. Have not been a church person, would that open some doors? Tried a few years back to date online. Not much market for an average looking mid sixty's lady. Met a few nice people, I was not the one they were looking for. My adult self knows that it is up to me to fix this, find a way to be more social, make new friends. My child self wants to go home for the weekend. Well, have not written you in a long time, did not mean to write a whole journal. Best wishes Mark, may you find home, make one, MLD, Memphis, TN
