I Say, I Think -- Much Too Serious!

Ya know?  I think a lot of people just take life way too seriously. I say, “Don’t do that.”  We should be serious about life but not so seriously serious that we lose ourselves into a world of frantic (fanatical) craziness.

I think setting up too many perimeters is just too confining, constrictive, suffocating and, quite frankly, unhealthy.  (Not discounting simple boundaries, though.)

I say that a strict rigid daily routine is much too tediously tiresome.  I speak from experience because I used to be one of those freaks who stuck to a strict rigid daily routine. A neat freak to boot. It wore me out.  So, one day, I just stopped. Now I am the type of person who has only an idea of having a (daily) routine/plan. Today I rely on my “backup plan” which is basically not having a plan at all.  It’s a whole lot more fun.  I call it my It my life in the “re-mix.”  I mix it up a bit.

Let me ask you:  What side of the bed do you normally get out of in the morning?  I say, “Get crazy with the day” and get up on the other side once in a while.  Believe it or not, it makes a difference.  Well, go ahead and try it.  Don’t just sit there and take MY word for it.

Let me ask you this:  Do you put your right shoe on before your left or your left shoe on before your right?  Well, do it backwards then. Switch it up.

Let me challenge you to do this:  Next time you get in the car to go somewhere, get in on the passenger side and then maneuver yourself into the driver’s seat.   I said it is a challenge and I dare to say that it is not an impossibility.  (When I did this I laughed my butt off at myself during the process.)  Go on, go ahead and try it. I double dog dare you.

I say that “changing it up” once in a while will definitely mess with your brain at first because you’ve done gone and confused it.  It still wants you to get up on the right side of the bed and it still wants to get that shoe on the right foot first.  Or left.

I say to free yourself from being so rigid and/or being so strict about your daily schedule/routine.  Don’t become a slave to it.

I say free yourself and throw caution to the wind.

 I say kick off those heels, lose the socks, go barefoot even if just for one day.  All day.  Inside and outside.  Everywhere.  Really.  So what?  You end up with dirty feet?  Big fat deal!  Hide the shoes and hide the socks but remember where you hid them.  (This might be a good time to “take a memo” of where you hid them and not rely on that confused brain of yours to remember (your secret hiding place) because you will definitely need them by sunrise tomorrow.)

If freedom could get any freer, then women, I say shed that bra, too.  What?  Have I gone too far?  Nah.  Just reach back there ladies, unlatch the hooks, unleash those “girls” and let them fall where they may.  A-La-Natural!  Ahhhhh, barefoot and braless = freedom at its finest.

See?  Isn’t this just so liberating?  Isn’t this just so much fun? 

Now, I say, take it down a notch, slow it down a bunch – inch out of that fast lane and move over to the roller skating lane, of course, making sure that your roller skates are on the right foot (or left).

I say, I say, just don’t take life so seriously. 

Let freedom ring – seriously!

Just a Moment...

Clock:  1:54 a.m. 

I am awake.  My mind and body are restless.  My eyes are awake.  They are staring into the darkness.  Everyone is asleep tonight – but me.  If there is anyone out there who is not asleep, I say, they darned well oughta be.  I’ll keep watch on this hour.  I don’t mind, I reckon. 

My bed, separated by a nightstand, is situated next to an open window.  The air outside is briskly cool but it feels good.  The sound of quietness can be heard for miles.  I put the blanket next to my face in an attempt to reassure myself that everything is going to be okay, everything will be fine. 

My mind wanders over to the place that I call my home-away-from-home.  It’s in a cabin that is situated on a hill in the small country town of Moravian Falls, North Carolina.  It’s beautiful there.  It’s God’s country.  When God created them there back woods, He done threw away the mold.  Yes He did.  There is no other place like it in the whole wide world.  I swear.

Now, at night, you see, you can hear the babbling creek below.  If it’s a breezy night, you can just hear the leaves rustle/wrestle around in their own little playground – whether they’re on the ground or up in the tree(s).  And the trees there are big.  Real big.  They’re friendly trees.  You can hug ‘em and they hug you right back.  But, seriously though, I wouldn’t want to go and make even one of them mad or anything.  Now then, if it’s a stormy night, the show gets even better.  The thunder there in North Carolina doesn’t merely “clap,” – oh, no, no, no, it roars.  You can feel it in vibrate into your chest.  Really.  The lightening produces its own skylight production.  It’s like a dramatic play and ballet mixed in together.  The rain is the accompaniment.  It pounds hard on top of the roof in a melodramatic kind of way.  The feeling is actually one of almost exuberance.  No, not “almost.”  It’s exuberant, indeed.  The air is different on my mountain, too.  It’s fresh.  It’s clean, not recycled.  Organic.

There is a deck around my cabin.  It’s a lovely deck and, best of all, it’s mine.  Someone put a hanging porch swing up for my leisure for which I am ever most grateful for.  In the mornings, I brew my coffee, take it out on the deck, sit in the swing and talk to the most delicious variety of birds there are out there in the woods.  No, I’m not crazy.  Well, maybe I am.  I’m telling you that, when I whistle at my forest friends they, in turn, whistle back – with the same melody – but they just do it better than I do.  They’re birds.  While I whistle, I can’t help but to be in awe of the giant trees that are just within my reach and surround the property.  And, above the ginormous trees is the blue sky in all of its glory.  So, I greet the trees and the up-above skies, pray a prayer and sip on my java some more.  I’m the happiest there at my home-away-from-home than I ever have been in my life. Truly. It’s my sanctuary.  One could conclude (as I do) that it is also my sanity. I feel a sense of “persona” there.  I feel a sense of purpose there.  No city life.  Pure home-grown country.  I feel “grounded” there.  No hustle or bustle, no pushing or shoving.  Nobody is really ever in a hurry there unless one is either late for supper or there’s a “Black Friday” sale happening the day after Thanksgiving -- in which case, there might be a rush and there might be some shoving and nudging going on.  I don’t know.  But you can be rest assured, however, that I won’t be late for supper there and I won’t be hitting the after-Thanksgiving sale(s).  I can Google Amazon (if I can get a connection) for those kinds of things (and I do have “connections” there on my sweet mountain in my most treasured cabin). 

Clock:  2:51 a.m.

Back to reality on Sycamore Road, my “home-in-home”.

I wrestle with the covers and fuss with the blanket in an attempt to comfort myself / reassure myself that everything is going to be okay and everything is going to be fine.

Everything is not fine.  Everything is not okay.  I don’t feel good.  I am certainly not myself.  I looked in the mirror earlier and I realized that, while the reflection looked somewhat familiar, the person I saw looking back at me wasn’t really me at all.  Now, c’mon, this is not a simply a case of “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall” here.  Mirrors don’t lie.  People do. (Don’t really know why I put in there, “People do.”  It just looks important up there next to “Mirrors don’t lie.”  It fits.  Well, it’s what came out of my mind and onto this paper so I’m sticking with it.  It fits, I tell you.  And, I say it’s the truth, after all.)

I’m getting older now. I can’t count the wrinkles on my face anymore – I’m outnumbered.  I have “old people” skin on my arms. No short sleeves for me.  I am outnumbered by my hair follicles, too.  I really love my wigs, though – they keep my head warm. I feel naked without them but you can’t sleep in them or even snooze in them.  I was told not to so, therefore, I don’t. I think I’ll invest in some head scarves.  Yes, that’s what I will do. Yeah, that’s a great idea.  Fancy ones.  Better yet, I’ll find someone who can sew me up some.  Fancy ones, of course.  My eyes have grown weary and puffy bags lay beneath their pupils mimicking uneven lumpy cotton balls.  My body aches from head-to-toe.  I try so to hide behind the truth in order to protect those that love me.  I think I do a bang-up, fooling, kind of good job at masking.  (Masking didn’t happen overnight – it has taken years of practice.)  But the real honest-to-Gawd truth is that I cannot hide any of it or mask any of it from myself.  I wish I could.

Perhaps all of this stuff about the wrinkles and bags and blah, blah, blah sound a little vain, huh?  Yes, probably.  Yes, maybe.  I am, just in this moment, seeing scattered pages of my yester-youth laying tattered at my feet. Remember, it’s just in the moment. 

In spite of it all, I do have a spirit of love for myself. I have the spirit of love for others.  I know who I am even if I have to go look for myself once in awhile.  I have the Spirit of God within me.  I am blessed in so many ways that I find myself outnumbered there, too.  (Which is to say, that is not a bad thing.  Not at all.)

That being said, I am HUMAN. And sometimes that “human-ness” thing just doesn’t work out so well for me and I succumb to, well, to all of it.  I’m not going to beat myself up over it.  Ouch.   

I’m getting older now and I’m growing tired now…

I think I’ll have my coffee out on the deck this morning.

Clock:  4:12 a.m.