All I Wanted Was a Pepsi

I had a friend once; one of those incredibly handsome, incredibly charismatic, incredibly charming, everything he touched was blessed kind of people. You couldn’t help but like him.

He had a bad day and wound up on the wrong side of a pistol, a pistol that he alone was holding. He pulled the trigger, I wish he hadn’t, but he did. No miracles, no divine intervention, just dead and buried and gone forever.

I have been fortunate, for even in my darkest of times I have always held onto the hope that there would be one more moment of joy worth fighting for. For me that joy now fills most every waking hour of my existence; perhaps that is why I often try to put positive energy into the world.

There is plenty of suffering, plenty of meanness, plenty of “bad stuff” going around that I do not want to contribute. Sometimes it can be quite seductive, it can feel temporarily good to put someone down, it can be easier to be unkind…and sometimes I am. I am only human, but when I make a mess I hold onto the ideal that I eventually will try to come around to cleaning it up.

I wrote a book once that was deeply personal and filled with what may have been some of my best poems and short stories. This was long before the days in which we all had our own personal computers, so it was written in hand, sometimes scribbled in crayon, and sometimes artistically woven with painstaking calligraphic beauty.

Then I built a fire while I was camping alone; I enjoyed the peace of looking into the flames, the way my thoughts were carried off in the flickering and crackling of the embers. In one of my moments of despair and darkness I threw this book into the flames. It is forever gone.

For some reason, tonight I remembered a few lines of one of the poems…it was about circles and karma and new beginnings and lost opportunities…

a child is born as an old man lay dying
and happiness found is another day crying…
it’s the circle of life, a free flowing line
that keeps the scales balanced and balances time.

If you are sad, you are not alone.

There will be another day filled with smiles, although you can not see it right now it will arrive.

Hold on.