On My Birthday

On My Birthday

I realize now, that in the back of my mind I always thought I would be my own superhero. Cherry-flavored candy dreams of doing the right things, the right way, earning love and saving myself from the world. It is like trying to print the Internet – too much, too wide, much of it not important and a waste of time. I need to think smaller, like a guardian angel of just one person. If I could, I would put all my goodness and power into one hot, steaming, excellent cup of tea, savored with cream and sweetened with sugar then sipped over a lifetime of well-earned moments of peace and comfort and satisfaction. Instead, I am mesmerized by the pinhole image of the solar eclipse, believing it to be the real thing. I know what is good but I am blindfolded by what is good enough.

It is my birthday today, as I write this, tomorrow now. Oh, how I wish I could become the person I want to be on this day. Oh, how I wish I could at least become the person that will guide me to be the person that I want to be. But who creates a tunnel for a creek? It is, perhaps, a romantic thought, an idealistic thought, to preserve the beauty and flow of a creek by leaving it uninterrupted through a tunnel in rock. But it is also a ridiculous notion. No creek needs a tunnel, nature always finds another way. The superhero I wish I were has been boring into rock for many years. Find another way, but that is so unclear, unknown.

I rise in the dark and fall and stumble. But I find the door, at least, this morning I do. Who knows about tomorrow? There is no clear cut path, each day you get to do it again, fall and stumble and find the door. Maybe we learn from the previous days, or maybe we have to invent something new every day, which can be challenging but maybe that is the superhero I need myself to be.