Things That Bring Me Back To Life

You have a rou­tine. It saves you time and money. Your mind can now do other things, but you also numb out. After a while, you are just going through the motions. So, you reach for one of the tac­tics designed to bring you back to life. I have a few favorites: walk­ing my dog “Killer” in the park, mow­ing the lawn, see­ing if I can con­tact aliens on other plan­ets by hav­ing imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions with them, play­ing the alter ego game (won­der­ing what it would be like to be some­one else), chang­ing my sched­ule, stay­ing up late, get­ting up early, tak­ing a nap, mail­ing money to peo­ple, tak­ing a plane trip by myself, walk­ing along a beach, hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with an absolute stranger, and (this is my favorite one) stand­ing on the edge of a cliff or a tall build­ing.

I still have sky­div­ing on my list and own­ing a sail­boat. There are many books yet to read and movies to see (about which I am pretty selec­tive). I have come to a point of being really bored by pol­i­tics (even though I teach forms of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the col­lege level). I have finally lived long enough to see one com­plete cycle. Per­son­ally, I am ready for some series of apoc­a­lyp­tic events. I doubt if any of them will make it to this small Geor­gia town, but you never know. A strange twist to his­tory would add some spice to the world scene right now. I am cer­tainly not wish­ing ill on any­one, I am just won­der­ing what the world of the meta­phys­i­cal has up its sleeve these days, and how it will break into real­ity.

There was a time in life in which I dreaded cri­sis events, now I look for­ward to them. By mid-life, you real­ize that with­out some seri­ous test­ing, you do not grow. So bring it on! So far in life, I have had a half dozen surg­eries, a list of jobs, twenty-five years at var­i­ous col­lege cam­puses, res­i­dence time in major cities and small towns. Some­how I feel like all of this is just a warm up. A good brain­storm, a tragedy, an unex­pected gift, a really good tree-tossing storm, or just the glim­mer of a for­merly un-noticed star, and I am back to life.

Make your “back to life” list and see if just think­ing about it does not bring a smile and a sense of pos­i­tive antic­i­pa­tion. C.S. Lewis once said that hell is just the same day over and over again. May some­thing hap­pen to make this day a heaven!