Shining Thru

Unsure weather to broach the river that could swallow you up whole, Leave you gasping for breath under the current as you are swept away, but needing to know what’s on the other side.  You face the choice of venturing forward or forever wondering.  Even if you manage to put your mind on something else, a new adventure, the question will always be lurking in the back of your mind, and will come out every time you have to pass by the swift water’s edge.  Unsure how to proceed, you hesitate.  Look for guidance from somewhere, but no one is around.  You are alone with your thoughts, questions……putting a toe in, you’re sure that you have made the right choice, and then a sudden splash distracts your determination….and makes you step back and think again.  What if this is the end?  What if there isn’t another chance to know, but what if by moving forward you remove all hope of anything else.  Either way you’d never know, and would be left….alone with the wondering or alone under the current.  Unsure of which is worse, the ending of time or the never ending wonder, you step forward again…..

Every feel like you’re stuck in the mud of life?  Like the invisible force is just gripping onto your wheels and they just keep spinning.  That’s a lot of effort not to see any progress forward, you can go and go for awhile, keeping hope alive that you’ll be able to get out, but sooner or later it will be apparent that this …is NOT working.  But then what?  This was the only idea you had….If you would have had a better plan, you would have tried that first…..so what happens when your plan for life gets turned around and upside down, what happens when you’re barely hanging on, and that’s just because there isn’t another option that makes any sense…no safety net to fall into, no one to run to, you’re just there on the trail that you thought was leading to your future, but is now leading no where.  You think and think about it, but only the same arguments chase each other through your mind, no solutions.  So what do you do?  Get out of the car and start walking, starting over from scratch and just hope that the next path you cross will have a better car and an easier trail, or do you go backwards, try and figure out where things went wrong, or do you struggle on the same path you’re on, but on foot, since your mode of transportation is obviously not moving?  Big decisions that have a ripple effect, into the most minute parts of your life, you wont even realize that the change will spread that far, until it does….maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.  Do you take the chance, or go on spinning your wheels?

Funny how a picture can look so clear when developed in black and white.  No distracting colors, only angles and shapes.  Everything is so clear in black and white, no doubt about what’s what.  Very little shades of gray, just black and white.  Wouldn’t it be nice if everything in life were like one of the crisp pictures, if everything in life were this clearly cut, nothing but black and white….as it is, we are stuck wondering around in the shades of gray, some darker than others, some stretching close to white, but not quite pure and clear.  All of the things that are in the land of the in between…no clear answers, nothing that is delivered without a catch, everyone always wondering what is going to happen next, even the most carefully planned routine can be disrupted with something completely unexpected.  Walking and thinking, wishing you were in the land of the photograph.  A land of peace and clarity, but that isn’t reality, that is a dream land that is just out of reach, even in our sleep…haunted by all of the “undecisions”.  All of the choices that have been left unmade.  Waiting for another day, hoping for a day of less gray, maybe just a little more clear cut black and white.

People are often times hard to figure out.  I have to wonder what motivates a person to do the things that they do, to live the way that they life….and I haven’t come up with an answer yet.  I’m sure all people are motivated by different things, and different actions are often motivated by different things.  Are there some things inside of us that drive us to do certain things, or act a certain way?  Do our emotions motivate us to do these things, people’s opinions of us?  Society’s protocol, where does that come in?

Joy, Lust, Passion, Doubt, Guilt, Anger:  All different emotions that get very different reactions from people at different times and towards different things.  I have to wonder how many of these things can motivate a person, are there more than one thing at a time that motivates a person, maybe pride and the well being of their family, or guilt as well as wanting to do the right thing….How many different motivating factors get strung into the background of every decision that we make as a person?

I know there are some people that act on a whim…all of the time, or so it seems, but even they are motivated by something, I don’t think that the decisions come all by themselves.  There are other people who sit for hours and make plans and lists.  Some people let other people make their decisions for them, not want the responsibility of a risky plan or one that back fires.

I think that we all have different things to consider in our lives, children, parents, siblings, spouses, lovers, friends, work, money, all sorts of different things that contribute into our plans for the future, or for decisions that take effect immediately.

Have you ever ran smack into a hard decision that leaves you feeling like you hit a brick wall…all disoriented and out of sorts, not really sure of what happened or where it came from?  Completely unexpected, not quite knowing what do to do, or the next step to take….You don’t want to disappoint anyone but you know you need to watch out for what’s best for you…what is the definition of the “right” thing to do…How do you know when you reach your final decision?  How do you know that you wont regret it…

I guess you really don’t know.  Sometimes you might just have to take a chance and trust your instincts, and if it turns out not to be right for you, you move on and make another decision to move on to something else….What else can you do?  Weigh the options, pick one, and hope things work out for the best….

How can you keep pushing forward when you don’t have a known direction?  If you don’t know what road you’re traveling down, it’s kind of hard to see over the hills in front of you.  Left or right?  North or South?  The various paths in life that pop up, almost like a secret shortcut…until you get inside the forest and get lost.

Directions in life are tricky….

Never knowing what is coming next, knowing that what you really want isn’t your call if you get it or not…knowing that your hands are tied and there isn’t anything else you can do but wait and see….but then how do you move forward…push on so to speak?  Do you just travel blindly or do you try to map out a new route?

All of the things that happen in life can pop up as obstacles.  Do you drive around, take another avenue, or simply travel over the hump?

Bridges you cross

Bridges you burn

Nobody knows where they lead

Can’t see the other side through the fog

The sunset is beautiful and distracting

The beautiful back drop of nature

Makes you forget the fall

The Unsuccessful crossing

The bridge in suspension

Above the sparkling waters

In front of the horizon

You stare at the silhouette

Wondering if you can use it

Wondering if you can cross

What if it falls behind you

Then you can only go forward

What if you find a hole and can’t get across

Trapped in the middle of indecision

Rising up above the rail and looking down

Wondering if it’s the only way out

Looking at the beauty of the sunset

And the calmness of the water

Not able to enter either side

How do you decide what is right and what is wrong?  How do you decide to believe one person and not the other…especially when the other person is depending on your support.  How do you decide that even though one person goes against the rules, they were in the right?  What makes that change over in your head…is it truly who you know that makes the difference?

I know people complain all of the time about celebrities getting out of traditional consequences for anything from theft, assault, to murder…all depending on who they are and if the news thinks that they will make more money supporting them or making it worse for them.   What gets to me, not that people want celebrities to get justice like everyone else, and face the consequences for their actions, but the fact that this exact scam happens on all levels and as far as I can tell, in all communities.

Even at the high school level, the Principal’s child gets special rights and privileges simply because they know nothing will happen to them.  They know they can choose to obey or disobey the rules and nobody is going to say anything to them…in fact they will probably do all they can to cover up for the child, simply because they don’t want the mama drama of their coworker.

Or what about when a boss is obviously unfairly treating a fellow employee, do you opening support the boss while secretly despising them and just hoping that they will find another job soon?  Or do you stand behind what you know is right….I guess that depends on how important your ethics are compared to your job and in this economy…I guess it’s a situations by situations type of decision.

I can’t blame people for wanting to protect their job security…but how long is our community going to stand behind the it’s who you know and how rich they are policy?  How long are we going to find it a moral dilemma of who we should support when we know who is in the right?  How are we going to continue to let those decisions simply slide under the radar while everyone else turns the other way for just a minute?

I don’t know what makes one thing right and one thing wrong…but I do know that we have only encouraged double standards in our society.

Choices rumbling around

Tumbling up and down

From side to side things bounce

Caught in a heated fire of decision

Pacing back and forth

The same thoughts over and over

Trying to make the chaos make clear

Nothing new….same facts as before

Indecision fighting to continue

Knowing you must choose

Every day choices feel hard

One after the other you fight the apathy

Relying on your feelings you fight the indecision

Reality closing in

Decision making ………………

“Forget Regret, or Life is yours to Miss.”  I really like this line from the musical Rent.  I think it says a lot about how we should all live our life.  I know that I have gotten caught up in personal guilt, worry, regret, and wondering “what if”….We don’t have time for all of that.  We have right now, and right now is a result of everything that has happened in the past yes, but how we live right now is what makes up the future so why screw up the future by worrying about what you did in the past….it’s in the past, this is now, this is what we need to concentrate on. 

No one ever guaranteed us tomorrow…..so we can’t worry about what will happen in the future, just as we can’t worry about the past…if we spend our whole life worrying, we’re not living.  Let yesterday be, because it’s in the past, and take care of tomorrow when it’s today.  No need to worry about tomorrow when you need to live today, you need to make decisions today…yes those decisions may affect the rest of your life, but if we spend so much time worrying about the consequences of one decision, we’ll miss out on the opportunity all together. 

In an effort to not think about the situation that we are in some people avoid thinking too deeply by living in the past,  walking down memory lane all of the time, or dive into one aspect of their life like work or a hobby…just to avoid thinking about whatever thing they don’t want to acknowledge fully in their life…most of us have something. 

Living in the moment seems like a simply theory, a great way to live…but we all know there is more to it than that.  I wish it was that easy.  Unfortunately most of us are aware that our life is linked to many other lives and that our decisions have an affect on all of those people.  It’s also true that sometimes we can’t control the “what ifs” that go through our minds.  But we can control how much time we dwell on these things…sometimes we need to look ahead or remember the past, but we can’t forget to live the right now, right here….