part one

Can you hear the rain falling?

Between what you wish you were and what you fear you are is the place you’re at now. Sometimes it is a bright shiny movie flashing before your eyes and sometimes it is a stinking wall of darkness squeezing the life out of you. One moment you think you have it all worked out and the next moment you’re wondering what you’ve done. One day you are young with all the time in the world and the next moment your vigor is gone and you can see that the road ends.

This is how it goes when you let life happen to you.

All the world may be a stage but there really isn’t an audience, just and endless cast of players who think the spotlight is on them.

It isn’t.

Almost everyone plays their part by default, repeating lines spoken before, repeating actions played before.

Almost everyone ends up the same, nearly forgotten and then completely forgotten. I think of my own father who did not complete sixty-three years on this planet. He grew up in New York City, served in the Army Air Corps during World War Two and spent thirty years in Columbus yet I don’t think I can find twenty-five people who remember him.

It’s a good thing that all of this is a mystery to most folks, as it would shatter their conception of reality if they had to face it.

Facing it is a blessing for a few, most of whom do not appreciate it.

Facing it happens in a cracked fraction of time that you never counted on, a moment of opportunity, an instant when the next page of your script is blank. Those who do not appreciate it try to shake it off and get back into the play as if nothing happened.

They are running on automatic.

A few stop and ask themselves why, why am I reading lines that have been read before? Why don’t I write my own lines? Why don’t I create a better role for myself?

These hard questions go frustratingly unanswered for most of us. Even if an answer is found it may be lost again on second thought. A second thought is the hook that pulls you back onto the stage. The world does not want you to find your place, it wants you in the place it chose for you.

When the opportunity to get off the stage comes around it is more likely to be a punch in the gut rather than a knock on the door.

Just such a punch began the story we are writing now.