Word Up, Sister!

Cold Coffee reminds me of the more endearing qualities of my father.  His early mornings were grumpy, but real.  He was real before work.  And when he would leave, I would sit in his chair and drink what was left of his cold coffee and pretend that I got to spend more time with him that way.  He loved me when he was sober, but someone else always came home at night.  He was someone that was heavily burdened by the ways of the world and the pressures of … well… everything.  I have no idea what caused my father to drink so much because he started before I knew the difference between my toes and my fingers.  This was quite a long love life with booze, a sentence of 20-25. 

The more time I spend in the “real world” the less I value myself.  I am not worth what I was years ago, but I was a screw up back then, just had a skinny ass is all.  I thought it was big then.  Wonder the massive expansions waiting for me in the near future…  Will I look back on today wistfully, dreamily as though it weren’t as painfully draining and tiresome as it feels today?  It is almost certain that I am that type of fool.  I will look on today fondly as though it were the “good old days”. 

It’s funny how I can look back at my childhood as some wondrous time.  I wonder how I can look back and only see the few minutes a day when my father was my daddy and he loved me more then any.  The largest portion was actually quite painful, for a childhood.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about those mornings with my dad.  I only remember the taste of cold coffee fondly.

Life does not equal pain, but requires it nonetheless.  Pain changes people, the way water smoothes rock.  Anger changes perspectives, and motivates people.  Happiness is great in small doses, but happy people are less inclined to evolve.  This lack of evolution can be connected to either complete contentment or the fear that if anything changes the happiness will lessen or end completely, giving way to pain. 

Much like heat and cold, pain and happiness bear an exclusive connection.  One could not possibly exist without the other.  Without tears, how could you experience joy, or know it when you see it?  Without the hurt of lost love, how could you take solace in the warm embrace of a friend?  Without war, would we have a word for peace?  Also, without a little happiness how could we see pain as anything other than the normal state of things, stagnant and unimpressive.

It is also my belief that in every painful event, there is a lesson.  Even if the lesson is nothing more that reinforcement that pain is powerful, it is valid and necessary.  Sit by yourself and look back on your lessons of life, how much in hurt, and what you learned from it.  Take an in depth analysis of the pains that revisit you over and over again throughout your life thus far and find the common threads.  Don’t encourage regret, that is just another roadblock waiting for you.  Try to be impartial.  The past is the past, picture it as a history book, and you are the author.  Try it. I dare you. I dare you to be the valedictorian of your existance.