You elusive thing, you.
“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”
I think I’ve been going about it all wrong. Until recently. I think it all has to do with perspective. Life, I mean. But not in the overly philosphical way it seems like. Just life like the way you get tired of the warming up the car to go to work, day after day, scraping the ice, waiting for the shower water to get warm, and then…and it’s always so sudden, Spring runs up and grabs you from behind. Like a slightly obnoxious friend you haven’t seen in ages. Naturally, an exiting reunion. The trees start waking up and the birds sing. The birds always take me by surprise. I had forgotten with all those months of silence. I thank God for it. Because love really is here. It really is now.
There was a story about a young man in University. He wasn’t attractive. In truth, he was downright bad looking. He dressed poorly. He smelled poorly. He also felt pretty damn badly in general. He was suicidal and went back and forth with drug addiction. In short, he was a wreck. He had no problem admitting it.
One winter holiday, he went home. It was an Irish home. His father worked in a factory not far from their home. That night at the dinner table, he was arguing with father about school and the state of his life. This went well into the night. The bitterness. The anger. The pain. The father so frustrated, the son so alone.
At the end of a very tense holiday, the man accompanied his son to the train station. They took a bus to get there and, on their way, a crowd of his father’s coworkers started jeering. “I can’t believe the fucking pig.” ” If that pig was my son, I’d have kicked him out of my fucking house years ago” “You oughta be ashamed of him!”, they yelled. And they only got louder. As the man and son got closer to the crowd, the man stopped. He walked up to his son and kissed him. He kissed him on the mouth. Without shame.
The people stopped shouting. The father and son resumed walking. The son has never been the same.
It’s a true story. I think he’s a priest now, however it doesn’t really matter. I guess what matters is the beauty of it. The way that we, as people, don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to have mansions or superyachts or even a boyfriend. We’ve just got to stop hearing the angry shouting all around us and live our lives. We’ve got to help people we see hurting. We’ve got to heal and be healers. Its not the task of some far off god to do that. It’s ours. And the sooner we realise that, the sooner we don’t have to live in shame and fear.
I’ve rather gotten off the topic of the quote at the beginning of this post, but it serves a purpose:
I’ve really got no reason to complain about the way my life is going. It may seem to appear unadventurous, but it really isn’t. There is always adventure, so much of living is being able to either find the adventure or make it up as you go. There is always something. Always.
