Howdy partners...Blakey here. Just relaxing on this fine day, enjoying a butterfly cookie and an iced triple latte with hazelnut and cinnamon sprinkles...all courtesy of my favorite evil corporate coffee chain.
Last night, I had some minor car issues and found myself stranded about 10 miles from home. Perhaps, in some eyes, a bad thing, but I took it as a sign to do a little personal inventory...spend a little time talking with a good friend who's always hanging around, but doesn't get enough attention from me nowadays. Who's that, you ask? Well, my friend Mr. Moon, of course.
I called a tow truck, gave the location of the car with instructions to take it to a local garage and then started the journey towards home on foot. It was a relatively cool night, the breeze moving in and brushing past me in it's hurry to get to wherever it was going. The sky was big and clear, apart from a few streaks of soft gray cloud, and the moon, my old friend, was hanging overhead, showing a quarter of himself and seeming only an arms length away.
At first, the walk started with me complaining to my old friend."Why?" I asked. The laundry list of everything that had been going wrong started compiling in my mind, as to give proof to some conspiracy theory that the universe was plotting against me. "Is this supposed to teach me something?? Did YOU know about this??," I yelled, raising both arms to my friend, a fingernail of floating hazy white in the blackened sky. Receiving no response, and suspecting guilt on his part, I walked eyes forward, east along the desolate outskirts of the city.
Suddenly, looking up at him again, it hit me that this is supposed to teach me something. Everything that has been going wrong is teaching me something. At that moment, I thought of the idea that a person's true character is revealed when they're trapped in their worst moments...when all seems hopeless. I'm not just talking about a car stranded on the side of a highway, as that was just another minor inconvenience. I was thinking back to all of my missteps over the course of the last few years- the failed relationships, where I ran away from issues, the chances I didn't take because of fear and self-doubt, the financial issues that sometimes cropped up due to poor planning or simple stupidity. All of these had been heavy on my mind, weighing me down and causing me to live in a self-made world of guilt and regret. I realized that everyone and everything else had moved on, but I still stayed in that world- I had became king of my own dark, destructive Kingdom of one.
I let out a heavy sigh as I looked up at my friend. I thought I saw him lighten and dance a bit in the sky. "I'm changing everything, starting over my friend, and I no longer need this crown. As you're my witness, I toss it away." I felt a slight smile cross my face and my heart lifted as I continued towards my home, the city lights growing brighter.
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