Weak To Wise

Each day is an eigh­teen hour jour­ney from weak to wise. At four AM or so, you begin to awaken to the tasks of a par­tic­u­lar day. One of the first thoughts is the one of: How am I going to get all of this done? It is not so much a feel­ing of dread as one of weak­ness. You just do not think you can do it. As you begin to become more awake, you start think­ing of a strat­egy for the day’s par­tic­u­lar demands.

By about nine you are well into one of the tasks and jug­gling the pos­si­bil­i­ties for the oth­ers. You begin to have inter­rup­tions and new demands. You have to remind your­self to live in smaller incre­ments of time. By lunch time, you notice that you have been knock­ing down the prob­lems as they arise. Being alive feels pretty good. In fact, there is a sub­tle feel­ing of being invin­ci­ble. Man! You are good at this liv­ing thing!

A ten minute post-lunch power nap and it is back to the office with men­tal sword and shield ready to slay any task-dragon left in the house. Noth­ing both­ers you. All prob­lems are num­bered. You have done this one before and that one too. That other prob­lem is just like num­ber forty-six but in a dif­fer­ent dis­guise. Why do I ever worry?

Sup­per­time is lit­tle dif­fer­ent story. You start look­ing back at the day and real­iz­ing a few new lessons learned. There are a few more lit­tle things to get done. The inner philoso­pher steps for­ward to syn­the­size the day’s lessons. You chuckle to and at your­self. You take note of the actions of oth­ers. For­give­ness and cau­tion have a rather sym­pa­thetic inter­play. Now you are one day wiser.

A review of the news finds noth­ing intim­i­dat­ing. The inner wise char­ac­ter knows that you can rise above any­thing. In a few hours, the day’s sounds and sym­bols drift into dreams. A few hours later and it all starts over again. There you have it. In twenty-four hours the jour­ney is com­plete. From early morn­ing birth to late night tran­scen­dence, a mini-lifetime has taken place. The dis­tance between weak­ness and wis­dom is an adven­ture. If you live an aver­age life­time, you will get around twenty-six-thousand of these lit­tle cycles. Pay atten­tion. They are just the beginning.