Random Pensées

A rebound

I have been a bit down of late, I must confess. Well, I don't have to confess it, I suppose, but I am going to just the same. I am feeling pressured at home by the difficult adjustment period my wife is going through, I am pressured by the demands of work, and I am wicked pressed by the financial side of things -- who knew windows could cost so much? The result for me is an increasing lassitude and difficulty in sort of pushing myself to complete the important daily tasks I used to just dash right through. This might also explain the paucity of posting here as I have difficulty rousing myself to write anything.

But, as I was walking on Park Avenue this morning, on the way to mortify the flesh at the gym again, as I do most every morning, I was thinking how nice and cool it was, and how the sun had perhaps not yet begun to take the chill of the darkness away. Then, I had a moment of clarity, a moment that perhaps, while not unique and known to everyone else already, was not robbed of its power in the slightest. It occurred to me that every day, the world is re-born. Every day, when the sun rises, it rises on a new world, a new day, a new you, even. Every day, at the rise of sun, you are given a new shot at redemption, a new beginning, a new possibility.

Even if you cannot wipe the slate clean from the day before, even if your personal balance sheet didn't reset and you carry over the debits and credits of the preceding hours, you still get the potential for grace. Redemption, it seemed to me as I paced the avenue, is not necessarily made up of a great epiphany or a grand and overwhelming gesture that tends to compensate for all the ills that you have performed or have befallen you. No, redemption is perhaps less of an end and more of a journey. Redemption, if you cease the moment and embrace the new day's sunlight, begins with and perhaps is entirely composed of small steps, halting movements that can become more sure over time. It has to start somewhere and it can come from making a small decision to do something different. It can even consist of a desire to change with the desire being the mother of the deed and that deed can be a baby step. What becomes important then is just taking another step and another step until you are on a totally different path.

Now, I don't mean to suggest anything is easy or even simple, that you can wipe out your debts simply by changing your mental latitude as the result of a ray of sunshine. No, not at all. What I mean is that you have to start somewhere and you might as well begin with the dawn. As Homer called it, "the rosy fingers of dawn". I wondered why he would choose to call them fingers. Perhaps it was because attached to the fingers is the hand and you can grasp the hand, each morning, and decide to pull yourself up and over and, in the process, begin anew.

And so, I choose, today, to take one small step, to throw myself at one or two small windmills and to, if not win the joust, tilt. For maybe it is enough to try. And maybe it is enough to keep trying, for in the trying, comes change.

And change can bring redemption. Every day brings that opportunity, that grace. Today it just seemed clear to me. So, today, I choose to take that hand.

I hope the above made some sense to you all. It was crystal clear to me as I wrote it.

Posted by Random Penseur at June 14, 2007 08:14 AM | TrackBack