The Conversation We Never Had

I can’t decide if I ought to use If You Could Read My Mind, Crossroads or Hurt should serve as the soundtrack for this post.

Can’t decide if I want to go with It Don’t Come Easy or Land of Hope and Dreams would be better.

Can’t decide if I want to tell you how angry and disappointed I am in some people because of the conversation we never had. Don’t know what I did or didn’t do or why things changed.

But I know I have thrown iron around the gym and yelled at the moon a couple of times. I know I have cut others out of my life and have been in the process of removing more.

I am very active in making changes and adjustments and within a shorter time than some people realize life will look different.

Sometimes you have to do the work and if that requires standing still in the fire instead of dancing than that is what is required.

Haven’t forgotten those final conversations with my father when we knew the clock was ticking and that he was going to die sooner than later.

Those moments impress the need for action upon you.

Break My Heart Again

If I listened to the experts you’d never hear a word from me or about me. I’d be nothing more than a ghost in time, a memory of someone you once knew.

I once considered writing up a list of references who would affirm this and snorted at how ridiculous that sounds. Could consider a second list of references who would affirm my use of words as tools to implement figurative blunt force trauma and decided that some of those members are too stupid to recognize they had been insulted.

The good old denizens of lollipop land, some of them would love to hear I felt like a hot poker had been inserted where it didn’t belong and was twisting.

But the stubborn old man would rage back at them and say I have had my heart broken more than once and that you can ahead and break it again.

I love and live hard. Heartbreak is a risk you have to accept, especially if you want to wander through your own personal Garden of Eden.

Sometimes you get kicked out of the garden and you have to endure a sentence of wandering around a colder, darker world for a while.

The benefit of having survived every bad day is you know that you have the ability to survive some more and those of us who rage against the twilight don’t know how not to keep going.

It is what we do.

Give Me Another

I felt like one of the characters from The Rhythm of Life today.

I backed into a pole during a downpour today and did a great impression of Grandpa Wilner who could swear for five minutes straight without repeating himself.

It was made worse because I was doing all of two miles an hour and was laser focused on the rear, but that bleeping pole was the same height as my tail lights.

I didn’t see it through the rear windshield or the backup camera. I could blame the downpour and a bunch of other things but none of those would pay the $350 it cost me to repair it.

So when I hit the gym I was the guy cursing under his breath, “give me another” as I fought to get a few more reps in.

****

One of my brother-in-laws told me a short while ago that my middle sister and I share something in common.

“You guys aren’t particularly tolerant of stupid people.”

Can’t say he is wrong but I do try to avoid engaging with them as it is often an exercise in frustration.

Periodically I dip into that pool of middling mediocrity and ignorant idiocy. I did so on Monday when I told someone on Facebook his comment was demonstrative of the arrogance of ignorance.

The silly fool issued a response that got my attention so I jumped back in and used a series of simple two syllable words and picture book to illustrate his ignorance in a way a simple mind could understand.

Afterwards I unfriended him but noticed at least a half dozen follow up posts in which I was tagged by him and others. I made a point not to go back because I don’t care if my words had the effect I hoped for.

Don’t care if they inspired people to agree or if they led to a series of 454 word responses about why they think I was wrong.

I am done. I said my piece. I unfriended him and I won’t look back.

His chance with me is done and I am good with that.

There is a small circle of people who get second and third chances with me.

A small group who for reasons known and unknown occupy places and spaces where I won’t let go easily.

We all need those who are allowed to walk in our internal garden of heart and soul and those who offer access to theirs as well.

Sometimes that connection is interrupted and sometimes it is severed. Experience has taught me to remember there is a difference between severance and interruption.

Experience has taught me that if you can tell someone you are disappointed at the conversation you never had and they come back to engage there is likely reason to have that conversation.

They may have been called to attend to an adventure you weren’t invited upon or maybe it was you who found yourself in the company of dwarves and a wizard.

Maybe it was you who got caught up in a fellowship that took you far from the shire and maybe the reason things changed is because you have changed.

Maybe you’re no longer who you once were and that is the real issue or maybe you are in the process of changing and not sure who you are becoming.

Both can be true.

Sometimes the most important and most courageous thing you do each day is put one foot in front of the other and walk a path with an end you cannot see.