Fall is coming. I can see it in the subtle changes all around me. Nothing overt such as changing leaves, yet all around me the land feels like Fall.
The days are shorter, the mornings colder, the air is crisper, and the sky is returning to its Winter shade of gray. I fear that it will be a long winter, with at least a few distinct hardships, and I’m going into the season with an emotional deficit which I cannot draw from in times of need.
I should remember the "Grass-Hopper and The Ants" at times like this, yet I’m unsure where to look or what to store that will ease my burden through the winter months. Clearly, the answer is to dig deeper and find strength from within, while somehow balancing that against a life of solitude and hermitage.
The soundtrack from the "Last of the Mohicans" is a powerful and emotional piece of music for me. It is full of life, love, struggle, and passion. Passion, I think, has been gravely missing from my life for the last several years.
Today, riding my bike back from the office, I passed by "Volunteer Park," where there was a group with a banner that read "Drums for Peace, Dance for Freedom." The area had maybe 60 people, mostly college age youths exploring their own identity, and older refugees from the hippie generation. These people, I thought, are indeed living a simpler life. Though hardly from free of their own problems, a simpler life nonetheless.
I looked at them and saw my own life just 5 years ago. That group of people would have comprised my peers, and one of the pickup trucks in the parking lot would have been my home. Am I better off now? Worse? Neither really, but unquestionably different.
So just who was I back then? Who am I now? And who will I be in the years to come? Though my inner being is still the same, this shell I inhabit, and the experiences I’ve lived, have and will continue to shape me in ways yet unknown. And this too is part of the marvel that is the mystery of my life.
Copyright (C), 1996, by Ashley Guberman
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