The tale of unnecessary roughness begins with music and a man who doesn’t want to whine but has hit a couple of walls because of…unnecessary roughness.
The past three years in have been a significant challenge and he often wonders how he got to be in the place he occupies now.
Sometimes he turns on the music and looks out at the sky and remembers what was and then visualizes what he intends to become.
Maybe he’ll find his own Jedi master who will show him the one step he has been missing from unleashing his full power. Maybe his son will one day say “I am a Jedi like my father before me.”
Lots of maybes in life and lots of times where you look back upon being a kid and wonder why you ever thought adults had all the answers because experience has proven it to be false.
Woke up two hours earlier than normal to ensure I was where I needed to be at a specific time and managed to blow it by fifteen minutes.
Was more than a little irritated and agitated by it and paid a price for the aggravation but couldn’t do a damn thing other than to promise to do better.
That promise wasn’t easy to give as I felt like someone needed to promise me that the walls I have to keep knocking down will be removed or that I’ll be given some R&R to recover.
Lately the weightlifting has been much harder because everything hurts and I can’t decide whether to rest and see if it improves or to just push through it.
Given the infinitely more painful and harder challenge posed by the digestive system my inclination is to push through the pain and keep working.
I can always find a way to do that, but sometimes there is a sneaking suspicion that might not provide the sort of benefits I wish for.
It is not the number of years I have been around for, it is the mileage. The running into and through things, the tackles, the jumping off of roofs, trees and from bikes.
The pounding taken on the field and the court requires payment and isn’t interested in IOUs.
People told me when I was younger this day would come and I said it wouldn’t and to a certain extent I was right,
But my ability to outrun the earth revolving around the sun has never been as good as I hoped, prayed or trained for.
So here we are.
****
Spent 25 minutes reading about the changes to my benefits for 2020 and thought about how much it costs,
Mine are pretty damn good, but they lighten my wallet in a way that I would rather not feel. So I look at the spreadsheet and consider what happens if I ratchet things down a notch below.
If I gamble on being healthy and not needing anything I could save quite a bit, but if I roll snake eyes or someone else in the family finds a way to not enjoy maximum health that could be more expensive.
Stare at the wall and wonder if I should trade my car in for something a little bit less or gamble on a couple of other moves that will make it unnecessary to change that.
People tell me to wear a sweater but I am not cold and refuse to put it on. People tell me a lot of things and complain that I make them uncomfortable because I tie a rope to a tree and swing out over the gorge.
If I fall I need to hit the water just so and hope the angle is just right so that nothing breaks. I remind myself the only time you get hurt is when you let yourself feel fear.
“No fear and no pain and you come out fine.”
In a different place I write about time and people and extend my hand.
“Ride the carousel with me. This one goes up and down doesn’t stay in a circle. It goes down a long winding road to a secret garden in which a king and queen have a private castle.”
The flag on the castle mailbox is raised signalling a scroll has been placed inside and just as I am about to take it out things go haywire and I am forced to attend to other matters.
I set sail for six long years and eventually return to find the carousel gone and the castle empty.
It is a story of unnecessary roughness in which many things are twice as hard as they ought to be leaving me exhausted and worn.
But just as I think I have no more to give and nothing left something happens and I discover a path that leads to what looks like the lost carousel.
Guess I am going to have to put on the hat, cue the music and find out what lies ahead.
