“Consider this: there is an unequal distribution of love in this world, something all of us have to give away freely. Before we censure others for their selfishness, we should probably see if we have done all we can with what we’ve been given.”
Picture credit : © Panaramka | Dreamstime.com – Winter day
I remember young love being like a surprise present I never imagined getting; it wasn’t better than what I have now, nor is the fondness of the memory diminished because it broke long ago. Like this road I walked on back in young love days, it’s just one more part of the tapestry that makes up who I am; and my smile is really one of recognition for a part of me that’s always been there, but overlooked for years.
Death and taxes aren’t the only sure things in life: injustice, misunderstanding, indifference, and the human desire to win at all costs are also ever present.
In all of us.
Why do you stay in this abandoned place when the door is staring right at you? Why do you stand in emptiness, saying, “Come in, come in, there’s plenty of room,” instead of using what’s left of your freedom?
I love this image, which looked to me like a really cool cover to an old GameBoy game. Or maybe the bird outside is attracted to the fake bird on the Christmas tree – you decide.
© Stanislav Kahuda | Dreamstime.com
In a long lifetime, we see countless stories begin; but, as time goes by, we begin to see them end, and the sheer accumulation of endings tends to wear us down. It’s easy to romanticize and dramatize these story’s beginnings, but it’s the middle chapters we should especially cherish — for the essence of a relationship or a life is not in how it began or, inevitably, ended, but in how it was spent, day-to-day, hour-to-hour and the impact it had on those close enough to feel it.
The autumn bids her not be bitter, but circumstances have been unkind to her to such a degree that she is unable to find reasons anymore to pretend to a joy she no longer feels. We look for the dramatic: the storm, the earthquake, the knockout blow – but it is the inexorable advance of simple loneliness that wears us down, and eventually, out.
He leaned his aging bicycle against the wooden pole and waited for her to come, sweating a little in the bright sunshine, full of nervous anticipation. He looked at the few, high clouds in the overwhelmingly blue sky wanting to memorize the moment, the feeling — to capture it somehow, so that, no matter what else might happen in his life, he could always say, “I know what it is to be happy.”
It isn’t the moments we’re trying to make special, or even when we’re each trying to look and be our best that live longest in memory. It is those times when we realize the paradox that is the simultaneous frightening strength and mortal fragility of love – and life – that mean the most.
