Crayons

I am not sure which part of life it is when you have it all figured out. Maybe after 40, maybe never. Does the comfort of an old rocking chair make you at peace with evolution or at peace with death, life after death or cowboys and aliens. I see my grandfather on the porch each morning for hours staring at the grass and the sky and I am curious to know if he is at a constant state of retrospect. Old people talk in retrospect all the time , they talk about the war, their lasting friendships, the hard kind of life, the things they never needed. They hardly ask.

Generations had lived and died before us and probably ALL possible problems known to man have occurred -- from the trivial like removing ketchup stains from your shirt, the different types of knots, making the perfect mix tape or the most complex like balancing equations or balancing your head and your heart. Everything has happened. Every solution written somewhere, a phone call to mom, a google away.

But it's not about knowing what the answer is, most of the time we already know – from the VCR manual, simple inner discernment or good ol’ plain common sense. We know. It's knowing that the choice is wrong but we do it anyway so we experience and live through what happens, to see, to feel, to get burned and to heal again. The greatest story you will ever tell is that gash on your leg on your first attempt to ride a bike. That you wore braces because your brother threw an orange at you and lost a canine. That life is not easy and I know it.

The juice, the goo, the meat of life is in the bridge between questions and answers. The crucial moment when you were seven and you had to decide if the apple will be colored red or green. The stop and go.