Why is it that Monday to Friday you wake up and feel that you have just got into bed turned over and got out again? Yet come the weekend when you can justify a bit of a lay in bed you wake up at 5:30 am full of life and cant for the life of you get back to sleep?
I have tried all the tricks like staying up late...well past 10:30pm, sometimes even until midnight!! Does that work? No, still up at dawn.
Going out on a Friday night drinking heavily and dancing for hours with unsuitable women. Does that work? ...No.
Even tried the sure fire way of falling asleep, Making sweet sweet love to my laydee! Now this usually results in comatosed sleep within 30 seconds of "doing the deed", it has been known to occur during the sweet sweet love making. Does this work at 5:30am Sat mornings? Nope,Nada, Nothing!
Today however as I got up the sun was shining and just emerging over the trees on the horizon casting its golden glow across a frosty field. The birds were starting to clear their throats and the air was still and crisp. As I sat with the first cup of tea of the day looking at the sun inch higher and higher above the trees, its strength lifting a vapour of steam off the frosty fence I had one of those rare moments when, as the song says, you feel "happy and you know it". I always find that happiness tends to be a retrospective emotion and its only when I look back at a situation or time do I feel that I was happy. Its not that I have a lot to be unhappy about, far from it, I am blessed (sorry I sound all American) with a great family who I love very much and who love me in return, I have a home and a job that I enjoy and I have my 'elf.
Its at these quiet times that I think of those less fortunate, those both far away and those closer to home and it make me wonder how I would cope in their situations. I only hope that I would have the strength and will to carry on. Those that have lost every single thing, their family, their home, their livelihood and are now facing the fear once again of loosing their lives to the invisible threat of radiation. Its not just that too, their fear will live with them till the day they die, the fear of the effects of the radiation on them and their children and their children's children.
As I sit and watch the sun rise on a beautiful spring morning thinking of the fun things to do with my family, I wonder if there was a man on the other side of the world who only a few hours ago sat contemplating the sun rise, only he was making plans as to which area he was going to search next for the bodies of his missing family.
6 comments:
There but for the grace of God go we all...
Steve- So true.
There was a Japanese woman on the radio this morning (lives in London) and she said that all Japanese know the old Samurai proverb which is, "Fall down six times, get up seven times".
Sounds as though you get up seven times as well, Joe - just two times too early.
Beautifully written, well said.
Tom- tell me about it!
Suze-These things make us count our blessings. Thank you.
There's a wonderful book called To Live about a man who has the strength to carry on. Chinese rather than Japanese, but the principle is the same.
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