Walk With a Walk That Is Measured and Slow

It's easy... so easy... to say I'm tired. I have to either honestly tell my ever-so-calm mother I either let exhaustion and the hard work of coming out of the shadow take over me Thursday, thereby missing her calls, or come up with something fascinating (Sure... she'll honestly believe I decided to go on a hot date on a Thursday afternoon. :-D !)
It's also easy to say "You're right. Honesty doesn't work. People are cheats, plain and simple, and we are irredeemable." (If said words do come out of my mouth, I hope I get a smack.) Or, listen. Just listen. Grieve a little that those who need to tell you that learned that. But I want to believe that there's hope for humanity, yet. That honesty works in the end.

I cannot let myself become what I dislike, simply because "that's the way it is". If I act in a way I dislike to prove to someone it's wrong, who does it help? No one. Period.
I cannot let myself be angered by accusations I know are wrong. They've been there before, they'll come again. The world keeps spinning. I can't be bothered... really, with everything else to put together, and to deal with, and to improve, and so on, I'm going to let petty gossip eat at me? Even if only I know, at that time, at that place, that something is a lie, it serves me nothing to become bothered. Sure, I'm going to wonder how so many fabulous tales of debauchery can be spun from whole cloth (Look, I'd like a debauchery filled vacation one day, preferably without finding myself hooked up to a saline drip in a hospital in East Bumfuk, due to dehydration or my body deciding it didn't like sudden heat,  ruining a vacation and leaving me exhausted.) and be amused... it's a bit more fabulous than spending time with phone calls from doctors to priests, (No, not that... that looks bad, now that I think of it... along with the physical, I want to focus on the emotional and spiritual too...)  to family, to whomever, to finding ways to while away those moments where you are, at that time, too exhausted or in pain to move properly. I refuse to qualify specious questions such as "Can you get out of bed?" with "Today"... the point is to be positive.

For now, my pursuits are limited. I'm slowly trying to get myself out. I take in fresh air, generally with an older crowd that is more inclined to sit and sip water in this heat, am thinking of sitting by the pool later. Still like sunglasses a lot. But am trying to get sun too.
I am going to do what's needed. I will not let anything steal away joy and peace. Whatever is in the past, whatever mistakes, whatever misunderstandings, I have to put there. There's no point in learning from them, if I keep making them, and letting myself be a little monster. The world is spinning. I'm changing, as we do, day by day. The world keeps spinning. I won't be beaten down by it. And one day, I'll catch that sharp, crisp scent of either sea air or the mythic peppermint wind in my nostrils. It is not where I've been. It's where I am, and where I'm going.

Image courtesy of We Heart It and the Daily Nail

_

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

_Where The Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein