Monday Morning Coffee

Most people are not morning people, and even more so not Monday morning people.  I'm one of those irritating happy morning people, especially on a Monday.  Why?  I have a theory. 

Shit happens, but I’m still going to hope for a better day.  As Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage and all the people are merely players." All life is drama.  The differences are the types of dramas we find ourselves and how they affect us.  I hear people say all the time they don't want any 'drama' in their lives.  Well, too damned bad, because as long as we live and breathe there is drama.  We can't escape it.  We can try, but it won't work.  I've tried many times. I've told myself on many occasions that my life would be better if I could stop feeling and the drama would leave me alone. Yeah, but that's bullshit.  I knew it was bullshit when I said it, and knew that saying it wasn't going to change anything.

While we may not be able to control the presence of drama in our lives, we do have control on the kind of drama we allow, we run toward, we desire, and to which we choose to run away. My choice would be the hero’s tale, but I often myself wrapped up in a tragedy.  I desire the epic romance, but often find myself in a myopic comedy.  I have been hurt deeply many times, but even still I have ‘hope’ for a better day, a better tomorrow. My trust may be broken, my faith may be weak, and my expectation may be so vapid that it disappears with the slightest breeze, but I still cling to hope for a better story, MY story.  Why, because I love myself.  I love the woman I am. I don’t deny my mistakes. I don’t ignore my faults. I don’t pretend.  I love with all that I have, all that I am, because I know what it’s like to be unloved and unwanted.  I know how rejection cuts so deeply it leaves a scar that burns.  I know what it’s like to look into the eyes of someone you love so deeply, to see no love staring back.  I know that pain.  I know what it feels like to cling to that dying hope that things will change, that love will overcome, or that the story doesn’t have to end the way feared.  But, I can only hold onto that false hope for so long, because there’s another hope that is seeded deeper within my soul I won’t allow to be sacrificed in its place.  And it is THAT hope that gets me up every morning, especially on a Monday morning.  

Regardless of how the day ends, I lift my warm cup of coffee to this glorious Monday morning, holding fast to the hope that this day will be the day that leads me down the road of MY story, that it be filled with MY drama, and that I feel all the love and beauty I’ve been searching for my whole life.  I already walk in my story, and I already have all that I desire, because it’s wrapped up in that woman I see in the mirror every morning.  The only difference is my ability to see her – and that is my hope – that I see her more clearly every day and don’t allow the drama and hurts of the world to hide her from me.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Happy Monday

"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die." ~Charles Bukowski —The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, 1998

I love Monday's. 

I know a lot of people don't like the second day of the week because they have to trudge off to some job they hate, begin another useless cycle of the rat maze they've built for themselves.  I know it well. I've done it.  But, it wasn't for possessions or prestige, but for provision.  It was my responsibility to provide for my family.  But to endure the monotony I became like a zombie, going through the motions without any heart, crying on the inside for some spark of life. The more I reached for that spark, the more the other rats in the maze scoffed at me, spouting their tales of responsibility, uniformity and practicality. That’s not how I was created.

Now I'm alone and can make more daring decisions, do without most of worldly possessions and just concentrate on meeting basic needs, living a life every day seeking purpose and passion. The key is ‘living’.

I don't want regrets. 

If my time should come tomorrow, I want those I've left behind to know I lived every day to the fullest chasing what truly makes me happy. THAT is the inheritance I want to leave my children.  Chasing, dreaming, hoping, seeking, exploring, experimenting, loving, losing, listening, watching, holding, letting go, touching, … living.

Have a happy Monday.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray