Over the Next Rise

A reason to go on.

I just sat there in my car for for a while, head down. I had ten minutes to go before I needed to start on another ten-minute walk from the parking lot to my destination, my job, but didn’t feel like bothering. I expected I would...but why? Was there any point? In anything?

I'd reached a place where I didn’t want to be, not physically but emotionally. There was trouble, and I had no idea what to do about it. I hadn’t lost anything, at least, not recently, but the foreseeable future didn’t bode well at all. After weeks of brooding about all of it, it seemed like a tipping point had been reached. It seemed as though I was about to lose control of, well, just about everything.

And I was all but certain that I just couldn’t do it.

Do what?

Go on. Continue.

I’m well aware that sounds serious. It was.

For a Monday, the parking was unusually sparse. I've always tried to get the particular parking space I was in, and I couldn’t exactly say why, except that I prefer it. My hand covered my forehead and my eyes as I slowly shook my head. When I finally took my hand away and raised my head and my gaze, I beheld again the scene that now appears with this piece. The photo was taken with a phone camera more than a year ago; the view had just struck me as being picturesque. But suddenly, it was quite a bit more than that, as I considered what I was seeing.

Work was to my back, and the rising hill before me blocked the view of some unknown area beyond. I had never walked to the top of the hill to see whatever there was to see. I don't want to, at least not yet. It isn't that I'm not curious, it's that I do not wish to remove that small portion of the unknown from my perception of that scene. I knew what was behind me, the means of making the living that supports me. When I leave that place forever, I may exit over that rise, on foot.

I considered quietly, as I began to feel a bit better, life is like that. It's a process, a journey. We all live through some tough times, and it's possible that if we knew what was coming, we would be unwilling to go forward to meet it. But we don't get to know, and that's key to existence. We dream and hope and plan, knowing that some things will work out while others won't. No one can knock the props from beneath us if there are no props. I got out of my car and stood on the pavement, both feet firmly on the ground. The world may be moving about me but I'm steady where I stand. I'd done nothing wrong, it was the things that others have done or will do that had unsettled me. Yes they had affected my life, and will continue to affect my life; but like money it isn't everything, by any stretch of the imagination.

Joie de vivre. Appreciation of life. Peace of heart, which eventually should lead to genuine peace of mind. I turned and headed on toward my workplace.

When I was a younger man, I used to take off and drive, sometimes for a full day, traveling aimlessly and with no set destination. I took no maps along and there was no such thing as GPS. I covered hundreds of miles and then relied on highway signs to get me to some point closer to my home, often getting back long after nightfall. The objective was to learn about my surroundings. How quickly did the landscape change? How did other people in nearby towns or cities live? What did their surroundings look like, and how did those places compare to where I lived? What should I expect from the world, and from my future?

That was a long time ago. I've traveled much greater distances, knowing where I was headed and how and when I would return. I haven't seen the whole world but I've seen enough to be confident that it's all there.

But of course, I don't know what the future holds. I don't know exactly how I'll live or how I will die. But I'm confident that my place in the world belongs to me, and that I have a right to it. I'm confident that if I don't have a single thing to call my own, I will still be able to move on and to advance over that next rise. Beyond it, I will find something I've never seen before.

And isn't it wonderful, not to know what it will be?

When the next weekend arrives, I'm going for a hike in the countryside.

*****