In this life, you've got to believe in something or you'll fall for anything.
----variously attributed to
Alexander Hamilton, G.K. Chesterton or Malcolm X
Live like you were dying.
----Tim McGraw, in a country song
Life can be brutal and sorrowful and discouraging. Yet there are moments that surprise you with their mercy and grace. I have lived an unwise life with many unthoughtful moments and wrong turns, wrong choices and self-inflicted miseries. but there are moments that stand out for tenderness and beauty and redemption, and I would not have missed a moment of it.
You come to a place where good enough has to be good enough, here you stop comparing yourself to the crowd or counting your bank balance as a measure of your worth, and simply breathe. Simply turn to the one next to you and hold her in your arms and declare your love, and let all the anxious striving melt away like an idol carved in ice. The striving has no permanence. It has no power to save you.
In the end we are what we choose to be, what we believed in, what we lived for. There isn't any need to justify our choices to anyone outside our precious circle, and within that circle every moment is sacred.
Whatever time I have left, I am going to spend it living and loving without regret. I'll remark on the world's follies with passing interest, but I won't share in them. I'm happy right here where I am.
If the bastards want to fire me or shoot me or take the bed I sleep in, that's just fine. There's nothing they can take from me I haven't already let go of, and the sacred things they could never touch. My love and my hope are beyond bargaining, and stronger than all fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment