Some good food for thought…

*******The Starfish*******

This is what life does. It lets you
walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the
paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way
you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a
fisherman
down beside you at the counter who
say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And
you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just
another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk
down to the
pond, where whole generations of
biological
processes are boiling beneath the
mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world:
they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are
you old
enough to appreciate the moment?
Too old?
There is movement beneath the
water, but it
may be nothing. There may be
nothing going on.
And then life suggests that you
remember the
years you ran around, the years you
developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated
careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection,
you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet
you have
become. And then life lets you go
home to think
about all this. Which you do, for
quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old
love, the one
who never had any conditions, the
one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting
you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you
smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.)
Because you
were born at a good time. Because
you were able
to listen when people spoke to you.
Because you
stopped when you should have and
started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and
pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as
well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to
dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift
through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as
they head
out to deep water, to the far and
boundless sea. …read more