Sometimes you’re beat down enough that you begin to forget yourself. It’s the long apogee on the backside of the moon, the lessening curve of a parabolic swing from joy to sorrow, the moment when the sun has finally set and you’re still on the dark trail, miles from home. These are the moments that define us, not how we effervesce in joyous times but how we persevere through the difficulties of life. We don’t stand atop a pyramid of thousands of millenia of evolution of human ancestors because they gave up but because they kept going. They walked through the night, survived their wounds, and came out into the dawn stronger in their resolve. We have it dead wrong, kiddos, when we let others define us and our worth, let others carve a path for us through the silver mists of time like necromancers, let others decide not just who we are but who we are going to be. We are nothing if not independent creatures. Let the locusts move as one–we cross the plains on our own two feet, eyes on the far horizon. In these troubling times, we need just one thing to keep our inner flame alive, we want only for that which doesn’t sustain us but pleases us. Sometimes we don’t want what we need, we want what we want.
Sometimes, we just need ice cream.
Writer, architect, father, husband.