My Wish for You

     The morning settled over my existence wrapped in crushing, immobilizing cold. The air itself crystallized around me when I stepped into it, to tend to the immediate needs of wild creatures who have come to depend on my support. They do mind the cold but they need to eat, and to drink. I help as I can.

     Like all things of late, it made me think. That can be a dangerous thing, because it isn’t what is around you, but what you take from it. You can take the remaining warmth and envelope your heart with it or you can solidify in the depth of the freeze. You can be deadened by the overcast, or glory in a warming beam of sunlight that finally reaches you. All around me are shadows of the past. In like profusion are the realities of the present, and dreams of the future.

     The past can be a foundation by which the efforts of the present are supported, or it can be a binding weight that prevents a worthwhile foray into the future. Like everyone, my past is mottled with both pain and pleasure. I dearly love to remember the pleasures and I deeply miss so much of it, knowing without so much as a wraith of doubt, I will never see most of it again in my lifetime. But, there are two positives to tip the scale in my favor, one, the pains experienced are also in the past, which means they are no more. The other is the certainty that I have not experienced anywhere near all of the pleasure and promise that I may. If I want to, I’d better prepare for it, rather than to stagnate among the painful memories that compose the darker side of a mottled past.

      Who we are and who we may become is only partly controlled by choices we make. I scoff at the fairy tale that proclaims “happiness is a choice.” It isn’t unless all choices are mine, and they certainly are not. I am but one person, and can use only what I have to fend off those who care not at all if I live, die, prosper or perish. I could not control the actions or decisions of a spouse. I cannot control the actions or decisions of anyone, not a lover, not a friend, not an enemy, certainly not my children. If I am diligent, I may be able to control my own.

     That is my goal. Let it overspread my existence, lift up my life, enable my finest efforts and raise the overall outlook of humanity upon this earth.

      I wish for you, precisely the same.