Our mind is a labyrinth of emotions, decisions and memories. The palms of our hands are an intricate network of roads on an interstate map. Our destinies and fates intersect like loops in a mesh of tangled wool. It takes hundreds of bricks to make a single wall. It takes a million incidents, trials and experiences to build that single wall somewhere in the middle of our head. Its the fort that protects you from scars inflicted on you by your loved and hated ones.
Its the mountain you scale when you want to prove your mettle and dont know how to do it. Its the pride you swallow when you find it so damn hard to say sorry or accept the fact that you went wrong somewhere and deal with it. Its the wall you kick ruthlessly when you are alone, forgotten, weak and vulnerable. Its the wall you vandalize when you seethe with rage at entities that dont exist. Its the wall you decorate when youre feeling euphoric and want to celebrate with yourself. Its the wall you deck when youre just primitively happy. Its the spirit you build when you need a moral boost. Its the knowledge you strengthen when youve just climbed over that big, mean old boulder that blocked your path. Its the wall thats yours and yours alone. Its your identity, your name, your pain and your comfort. Maybe its a soul.
You need to hold on to it even when times get rough, because somewhere up ahead the construction work finishes and you find yourself sailing on smooth tarmac again. The streets and roads that mark your palm may just hold meaning after all. But it doesnt have anything to do with astrology or the stars or the alignment of planets. The lines on our hands are etched with time and have their own stories to tell. To each his own. Take care of your hands. Theyre your biggest storybook.
You walk a road but you make sure its straight. Sometimes there are manholes, sometimes there arent. Sometimes you cruise, sometimes you stagger. Sometimes youre the epitome of grace, sometimes youre the biggest klutz in town. Sometimes you fall in front of the whole neighbourhood but hey, you dust yourself off. As usual, thank you very much. Always that grand, old wall to support you and help you get back up. Whichever way you go, whichever direction you turn, youll always be going somewhere. To the supermarket, the mall, the local garbage dump, to the best friends house, to a ditch maybe. And one particular road always leads back home but who wants to turn around when youve got this far. Is it too much of a cliché to believe?
We break a lot but ironically, were also very flexible. We bend around a lot of hazards without knowing it; its like bravely volunteering to wrestle a snake at a local carnival and defeating it, only to be told later that it was a rare, tropical species, the most poisonous and lethal of its kind. These things strike you, no doubt, when youleast expect them to. When youre snoozing or when youre twiddling your thumbs on the back porch. You suddenly realise how many quandaries youve been through and how many troubled waters youve crossed to come this far.
That youve come so far.
And how many marks and scratches have you left on faithful old wall? You lost count. Someday, eighty years from now, or twenty or one or a half, youll have to demolish it and watch Old Faithful crumble. But by then youre a real person with real problems and real wisdom to dispense.
Those are the kind of people who can safely say theyve triumphed. They can set down their flag and pose for the camera. They can look back and analyse every piece of living existence that will now roll before them like a movie. The setbacks, the victories, the friendships and the hostilities. They fought the battle. They shed the necessary tears. They tended to wounds and inflicted some of their own. They communicated. They got right down to the nitty-gritty practicalities and dirtied their clothes. They plucked the petals off of flowers in hopes of answering the unanswerable. They made absolutely no sense at times. They were young people. They wrote in journals. They ripped up those journals and watched the pages curl up in smoke. They decided what kind of friendships to break. They did the work they loved. They loved the work they did. They kept gardens or pets. They watched cartoons. And they laughed. They laughed a lot.
