Listen to Jim’s 3-minute vocal podcast: https://youtu.be/X7Cj-J6EScM
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PUTTING SILLY STUFF IN ITS PLACE
“Well, how is your week going?” someone asks me.
I pause before speaking. There are two ways to answer the question.
I try to decide which reply is worth the effort.
Want to hear the two alternatives?
I could say, “What a week! I totaled my car, traversed the intricacies of replacing it, the icemaker in my brand-new six-week-old refrigerator broke, our home furnace exploded and died and a replacement is in place and beginning to work, my bookstore rent will increase enormously in a few weeks, new tag and insurance and warranty activities suck up all our time…” I could say all that, feel appropriately sorry for myself and just come off as a self-centered whiner.
Or, I could say, “It’s a glorious week. Business is bustling, one old friend brought Asian food to the house for an evening chat fest, my best friend from Second Grade sent me a lovely handwritten note from far away, I am traveling East this afternoon to inspire and energize a meeting of booklovers, my lovely wife smiled and held my hand and began her fifth decade of keeping me balanced, and I am about to write yet another story about life love and confusion in my Deep South life.
Which of these confessions will do more to make the listener chuckle? Which will force me to appreciate and re-appreciate the wonderful life that awaits my order to resume full speed ahead?
And which true tale will make me drop the disparities and despair that seem so petty, compared to what other people are experiencing throughout the world right now?
Tumbling together in a merry melange of Life Happenings and Unexpecteds, stuff just seems to happen lately. I always hope the Law of Averages will catch up with me at a later date, but that date is just plain happening anyhow…without my permission, of course.
I think I’ll choose Door Number Two and add other pleasantries for the listener’s enjoyment.
Better still, at some point I’ll shut my mouth and listen raptly to what’s happening in the listener’s life
© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed