Friday, September 11, 2009

Killing Time and Coffee Splatters


I'm not sure what it is, but I feel different.

Yesterday morning I was quickly rushing around trying to get to work on time and I abruptly ran into the counter and splashed coffee all over the kitchen floor. I rolled my eyes, ripped off a few paper towels and bent down to tend to the sticky mess that was splattered across my baseboards and running down my shins.

I couldn't help but hear my mom's voice, "Everything happens for a reason, you know."

Really?

So there was some cosmic purpose for me spilling hot liquid all over my bare flesh?

I am not sure if I am the only person who looks at the world this way, but I sometimes feel like watching the dust floating in my eye is more interesting that anything else going on. On long car rides I have actually watched a piece of dust in the line of my sight for 20 minutes.

Maybe that is why spilled coffee leads me to ponder things of deeper consequence. I am easily entertained apparently.

As I was bending down to wipe off the coffee splatters from the baseboards, I couldn't help but get sucked into an entirely different train of thought. What if there are some things that don't matter? What if some things are just flecks of dust in our eye?

What if there are some days that are simply created to exist as the space between the notes in the composition of your life?

I wiped up the coffee, wiped down my legs, and paused for a moment.

Before I began the rush out the door I wanted to take back the moment of time that chance and accident had high-jacked from me. It was then that I started to get a little angry, because there was no way on this planet to get those few moments back.

And it was then that I decided I wasn't mad at the coffee being spilled, I was mad at the time it killed.

I don't think there is a purpose for everything. I tend to think there is a purpose for the things that enforce change. Things that promote movement, like rapids in a river, planes that fly from here to there, and love that transcends reason.

I know that God is in there somewhere, and I do believe he has a plan for the small things I have dedicated my life to, but today I feel like I am just killing time.

And I don't even have time for one more cup of coffee.

Friday, September 4, 2009

If and When

If I don't step
If I don't revolve
If I don't collapse
Will I have felt at all?

If I don't clamor
If I don't stammer
If I don't shut down
Will I have made a sound?

If I don't stand
If I don't yell
If I don't participate
Will I ever be awake?

And now I am left with the if of it all.

The if that is simply waiting to become when.