300 – Picking Up Roots

The Lightness of the Morning

In the early light of the day, the only sounds to interrupt the sweet melodies of the birds were the dull thudding of his feet’s impacting the sidewalk and the occasional rumble of a passing car.

This was his time of day. The time when the world was still shaking off the cobwebs of sleep and he was ready to take on the day. He felt light – as though for once he was ahead of everyone around him. He didn’t care that there was no one around him. It was about the feeling.

He wanted to reach out his arms and force the calm of this moment inside of himself, to swallow it whole and hold it within throughout the day. Inside he knew, this moment – like all moments – would fade to memory.

As he made his turn east – back towards home – the sun began its ascent above the trees; driving out the shadows. He could feel the temperature tick up a few degrees. With it came the pressures of the coming day.

In the light, he saw more of himself. He didn’t like what he saw. The lines of the years, of the disappointments and failings, seemed to him to be laid bare in the light. They were why he haunted the edges of the days – its darknesses and gloamings – he felt safer there away from the glare of the day. No one could see him. In those moments, he felt free.

His pace slowed the closer he came to his house. He knew the weight of the day awaited inside. He wanted to delay it as long as possible. He wanted to hang on to this freedom – to this lightness.

He knew the sun would continue to rise, no matter his pace. After a pause, he trudged on.

Land’s End

With cool fingers the water rose up to meet his bare ankles. As he stepped further, it moved up his calves, undulating beneath his knees with the incoming tide.

The afternoon sun burned across the water in a fiery shimmer. He turned towards its warmth and shut his eyes.

He knew what was out past the island at the point of Land’s End: an endless canvas of blue possibility. He turned his head up to the sun and took a deep breath, exhaling it he melted into the water.

Everything fell from his shoulders: doubt’s constant nagging, his worry over his family, the upheaval happening at the office, the miles he’d traveled to get here. He felt light for the first time in months. The only thought that entered his brain was that if his feet weren’t held down by the water he might float away.

Happiness enveloped all of him in a warm embrace he had only known glimpses of in the past six months. His was a good life, but this was something else. He hadn’t had any idea he needed it. The car had entered the parking lot, and he’d been pulled toward the water line. Before he knew what was happening he was removing his shoes and socks and rolling up the pant legs of his jeans.

It felt so good. He felt connected. He belonged to this place. He heard nothing, but the gentle lapping of the waves upon the shore. He didn’t feel the eyes of the tourists staring in disbelief at this man up to his knees in the cold Atlantic in May.

He kept taking deep breaths. He wanted to soak it all in, make sure it reached the deepest parts of himself. He’d needed this feeling. He’d needed to come home.

A Good Life

They clung to life. The only strength left in their body was channeled into the desperate grip of the fingers that held fast to this world.

Theirs was a life of the greatest opulence. They had wanted more and more, so they had taken it. It had been easy for them to look past the adage “of whom much is given, much is expected.” They’d been too busy enjoying their lavish life to think about what might be expected of them. They had never stopped to understand that no matter the great amounts of wealth and things they accumulated, they would still end up in the same place as those whose backs they broke in their efforts to accumulate more.

They had spent their money on age-defying tonics and treatments, doing everything they could to ward of the ravages of time. It came for them sooner than most.

None of the tinctures and remedies could touch their soul, and the soul is what keeps the ultimate score. As their luxurious extremes grew, their soul blackened as each day slipped away.

It began as small cracks in their façade – a hitch in their step, a cough, a moment of blurred vision – but grew with the passing of time. The cracks became deeper faults. Their hair fell out, they lost the vision in one eye, and were always ill.

It should be said, they were not bad, just oblivious to the destruction their opulence caused the world around them or within themselves. They never calculated the cost of their excesses; never understood the sum of everything always ended as nothing.

They never nurtured their soul, and it left them. Their major mistake– the one of so many – was to believe living the ‘good life’ was the same as living a good life.