2020. The Year to go down in history, at least for this generation. But it has been a year, for many. For me, it’s just another year. That’s not a bad thing. I have my routine, I do my things, I go about doing the work, doing the mom/grandma thing and then there comes my silence. The times when everything that moves me settles down and I find that I don’t have somewhere to be or someone to mind.
I am comfortable in my skin – well aware of who I am and where I am, both in time and in space. But sometimes, sometimes… Sometimes, I just have too much time to think and ponder the choices people make, the choices we all make, and how those choices unravel and bleed out into other people’s time and space. I wonder if we even know, or for that matter care, that we’re bleeding all over the place.
Just before Thanksgiving my car was trespassed by some pre-dawn wanderers. Being the faithful person that I am, I had left my wallet in it. I’m still reeling from that wreckage, but not so much due to any financial loss as much as from the emotional toll it unexpectedly took. Someone was trolling around at pre-dawn hours checking cars so that they can then proceed to trespass and strip the unsuspecting victim of whatever they so desired. Some things were expected, wallet, multi-tools. Others, those are the ones that hurt, because they are irreplaceable; my beat up, worn canvas saddle bag with cheap watercolors and sketching pencils, my glasses (which cost me way to much to begin with and don’t really work, but they cost way to much to begin with), a lipstick (for emergency dolling up) and who knows what else – because you don’t always remember what you keep strewn in your car when it’s mostly a transportation device. What does this have to do with bleeding? Everything. Something, someone did in the life of these individuals placed them on a trajectory from which they have not recovered, by choice or by not. They then lurk around, sucking from others for survival. But instead, they bleed. They leave behind a string of consequences from which, not they, but the victim must now recover. Do these people ever look back at their wake? Do they ever wonder the impact they have on those they harm indiscriminately? Or do they just move on never thinking twice about who’ve they’ve touched, whose life they have altered, affected, bled onto.
Maybe their Karma will simply be that – the indiscriminate harm they cause others will just rack up and suddenly come to pass. Or maybe they will skate right by and their Karma will be passed onto their off-spring and they just won’t understand why they have such “bad luck” or why life is so difficult despite their best efforts to live a “good one”. How does that work anyway? Maybe I’m still paying for the past sins of my progenitors. Lord knows they did harm. And it wasn’t always indiscriminate. Sometimes it was just to spite – the whole eye for an eye theory…
And then there is The Year-2020 and all that it bleeds upon. So many lives. Lives impacted, lives lost, lives impacted again. Yes. The indiscriminate harm of plagues, disease, and once again our choices. To whom do we listen? Are the politicians correct and if so, which ones? Covid-19 knows nothing of what it does. It exists about, impacting here, impacting there, impacting everywhere – it’s almost like a Dr. Seuss rhyme, “I will infect here or there, I will infect everywhere…” I know, I know…poetic license.
Everywhere I look it seems…then there were the fires.
It’s just one long chain sometimes.
So, do I dwell? Just long enough, I hope, to have constructive thoughts. Just long enough, I hope, to allow myself to reflect upon the things that I do, the impact I have. I am hopeful that I do not bleed on others and cause my own unbeknownst, indiscriminate harm. I am hopeful that I can contemplate just enough to keep my mind in a balanced and sane state, but not so much that I allow myself to be overtaken by other’s indiscriminate harm.
Follow