Well, it's noon on April Fool's Day. No stroke of a bell. No magic fairy appeared. Noon struck, and here I am, still a fool.
I was kinda hoping that this year, at the stroke of noon on April Fool's Day, POOF ! I would magically become a wise and enlightened sage and end my years as Cinderfoola. Someone with all of the answers and to whom everybody clamours for advice. No such luck. I'm still here trying to make heads or tails of things. I'm still floundering. I'm still in the cinders.
When I was a kid, I thought all of the answers lay just inside the unseen but magical door to adulthood. Again, no such luck. What awaited me instead was a vast and seemingly bottomless pit of more questions into which I stumbled headlong and have been flailing lo' many a dark moon.
I can't be the only person who's made this discovery though. It's not possible that I could be that profound. So, if there are others (assumedly many, I mean we're how many billion on this planet?) where in the hell are they? All I see are people who have it together. They have their tidy little careers, their tidy little 2.5 children families, their tidy little acquisitions. For all intents and purposes they've got it "together." They write treatises, they publish books (mainly found in the self-help section of Chapters, et. al.) They take tidy little vacations and plan their tidy little financial futures. They even plan and pay in advance for their tidy little deaths and funerals, so as to spare their families cost and/or decision-making. Nice. Tidy even.
That's all I see. I don't see the others like me. Maybe they're hiding. Maybe, unlike me, they're unwilling to flaunt their foolishness. Maybe they're not quite so ready to tell the world how stupid they really feel. And maybe, exhibiting some cleverness, they disguise themselves as just everyday ordinary people, going about the business of living. Yeh. They look just like you and me and so, how could I tell?
(Revelation approaches.)
Hey! Maybe all of those "together" people are just fools in clever disguises. Maybe they're just too frightened to let people know stupid they feel, how stupid they really are, especially when they're the ones with the alleged answers I seek.
So, that it is it? We're all fools? If that's the case, where do we go for the real answers? Who knows stuff? Maybe it really is those fellas/gals that sit virtually naked in caves or on hillsides. They have no disguise. They're not hiding behind any superficial trappings like Gucci or Armani. They don't own a sailboat or even a fork. They don't have a house in Hawaii and one in Colorado. Still, they seem quite content. Happy even. Most importantly, they're not claiming to have all of the answers but they're willing to share with those who question. They don't have any tidy little books that you can shell-out 20-40 bucks a pop for though. You have to journey to ask them the questions. Smart.
Maybe those are the answers worth having. I'm not a Jesus-freak but he said something that needs repeating to all of those self-help gurus out there making money hand over fist off of fools like me. "Freely ye have received; freely give."
'Nuff said, don't ya' think?
1 comment:
If all homes had glass windows we would see what lives are REALLY like. Assume not that all these 'together' people are together. (I know, you're not assuming, you're asking the question...)
The more I learn, the more I meet people, the more assumptions I make about people having it 'together', the more I learn that's my paltry perception of them is just that - paltry....their lives are perfectly imperfect.
To the outside observer, your life looks pretty good too. Believe it or not.
I've become friends with people up here in Northern Ontario who TOTALLY look like they have it together and you know what?...maybe 'together' is jumping $50,000.00 from one credit card to the next, or from the line of credit, and stressing about the $400.00 interest that racks up on each one of those accounts every month, but they have a number of boats, a cottage, a couple of cars, work so much that they can't see straight, and those 2.5 kids they've got?...eating corn-laden crud, corn-syrup-corn-starch-filled convenience foods and can't remember the last time their mum or dad read them a story. Hmmm...and then they wonder why their kids have attention issues at school, or are glued to Playstation straight afterschool? I wonder when the last time they sat down to a meal together (and without snapping at each other) was?
The grass always looks greener on the other side. If you aren't happy in yourself and your grass tastes like crap, when you get to the other side (if you get there) you'll discover the grass still tastes like crap.
So it ain't all roses.
You're gorgeous.
xoxoxoxo
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