Shelter in Place; Safe Living in Poetry is the Window to the Soul...

There is a volume to the chaos.

A simple yet rhythmic pulsing of regret stained motives circulating within my head. And I am left as a prisoner to each and every musing, wondering as always if this is a construct I myself am entirely master.

Perhaps that is the circuit in which we all exist. These pulses of electricity that fire off connecting each and every thought, action, and ultimate reaction that adjoin us within the fabric of life.

Life connotes living, certainly, and how much of that in the past few months have we all done?

How much have you lived lately based on your previous known understanding of the concept. We define things all differently, and for each the response is as varied as the colors of the spectrum.

Many lives are teeming and vibrant while others are shadowed and frail.

Others still a mercurial venture back and forth across the scale.

Where upon that landscape were you most often treading?

And where upon it do you now reside?

Shelter in place is so much more than live safely, isn’t it? The very concept of sheltering is to recoil for safety. The instruction quite necessary as living safely is such a broad definition that while many erstwhile fools know no concept of the notion many others who think they have a real concrete grasp in actuality possess a striking failure there.

Safety for one is starkly different from safety to another.

And then there is the ever elusive white whale of safety for all.

What is safe in life?

What in life is safe?

I find this time has been fascinating to witness people forced to slow down their frenetic race upon the hamster wheel they fancifully decorate within their own respective cages delicately masked as life.

Once you step off that wheel and gather about your senses in one place for an extended length of time it can have profound effects.

Not all welcomed.

Not all positive.

Yet each and every one quite healthy.

Perhaps even necessary.

Sometimes running from one plotted course to the next with little effort spent on absorbing the moments and considering the impacts within each movement that life becomes less about living and more about achieving and reaching.

This often done in tandem with avoiding and concealing.

Facing the world is far less arduous a task than is sidling up and measuring yourself against the true nemesis in life.

The reflection in the mirror.

Yourself.

Do that truly and walk away with full contentment and you have found what earned bonuses and marked achievements and goals won will never offer.

Lasting peace.

Because it is a race never won, a goal never conquered, and a wickedly hellish experience to stare down your self, pick every bit of it apart, and piece it back together better.

A better version.

How often do you update your phone’s operating system?

How often do you update your own?

There is the real venture in life.

That is living.

Experience it all externally, yes, it makes for a hell of a long, winding story.

Yet it all matters little if your journey inside is comparatively slight.

There’s a wonderful quote about life many including myself love from MacBeth that has been wholly condensed and in ways repurposed as is the trend in life to take a larger scale creation and trim it until it’s a skeletal portrait capable of being consumed in bite-sized nuggets. With a wider application. Emphasis on the word consumed.

“Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Life is an adventure, but it is told not by the merit of the accomplishments of the individual, but by the way in which they achieved each and every thing they have done.

There is glory in life always to be had, but so often it is misplaced and so we often see icons created by society and then immediately torn down.

It’s all fabrication.

The truth is in the heart.

No adulation will ever replace the feeling you get when you know you’ve made a difference.

Even greater is when you fail to make a difference, but you let those failures as painful as such betrayals can be deter you from further attempts.

You keep trying.

Because someone somewhere needs help.

And while so often we all claim we do, when presented with it, truly, do we take it?

Most often the answer is a startling and resounding no.

Keep trying.

That’s living.

Stay safe, y’all.

May 26, 2020

Last updated May 26, 2020