Mediocrity

Relaxing in front of the fire
Flames licking away another log
Day has not yet dawned
Stars bright as diamonds in the sun
Stillness in the cold outside
Memories of recent days flow
Staccato in the mind
Point and counter point
Good offsetting the not so good
Languishing in comfortable neutral
Each day a chance to rise above
Chance will be salvation
BAH!
There is no boon in chance
An empty dream
Recalling all that chance has scotched
Resolve failed
Will failed
Imagination failed
Corrupted by "what if"'s
Chance and mediocrity synonymous
But that is a digression
Today is a new day
As the stars fade
So too the derision fades
Looking forward to the dawn
Warming of the air
Next opportunity to tip the scales
Coaxing the good out of life
One second at a time

I load up the fire and sit expecting to fall asleep as the fire warms the room, to no avail. So I write about the moment to see what is really keeping me awake. It's always interesting to see what can be teased out of the subconscious when it is caught unawares and relaxed.

The past week has been a blur of paperwork that had I been procrastinating so it felt like I was coasting, relying on chance to spring some grand surprise upon me. I have come to know that chance springs no surprises, I just need to remember that. It shows it's true form in the final days when people reflect upon their life and realize that relying on chance has robbed them of their own direction and, while they may have been contend and satisfied, they never truly lived.

I had a question posed to me a few months ago, "what would you like people to remember of you, write a eulogy", or something similar. My response was something along the lines of "I didn't really have any great need to leave a mark to be remembered". I have been willing to live based on what is chanced upon and not leaving any mark as a result. I still do not feel a desire to leave a mark but perhaps grasping for more than chance will result in a larger footprint than had I continued to coast.

Chance exists, I do not dispute that. It is not good or bad in it's essence. Consider the simplest exhibition of chance in the flipping of a coin. On average, fipping a coin will result in roughly an even number of heads and tails appearing. So while flipping the coin of life, good and bad appear in roughly equal measures. It is not chance that sways the flip to favour one over the other, it is the will and the action to reach out and turn the coin to get what you desire. Sometimes it is not your will but someone else's will imposed to create their imbalance of good...so do you get their bad by default?

In mediocrity there are still imbalances within the whole. Someone is getting more than average and I am about to make sure that I join that group. My conscience nags me to consider others so I don't intend to force my good by pushing bad onto others, I doubt it works that way. Raising the level of good experienced, or at least felt, perhaps just adds one notch to the overall collective tempo of life. More good does not result in more bad somewhere else. It just means there is more good to pass around. Like love.

Perhaps good is just another expression of love anyway.

Jeff.