To all the genes in me

Man, I can’t tell you where I thought I would be years ago. I was fresh out of grad school, starting on as a lecturer at the University, mad in love with this girl – I think she kind of liked me, too, but I was a wild one. 

Do you remember walking around that neighborhood with her and her telling you which houses she liked and would live in and talking about her faith and you getting real deep into faith and going on a trip out West and having this dream and thinking she is the one? That’s wild, man, in a different way! Never tell people you barely know that you think they might be the one. 

But it makes sense, you know. She pointed you to a path of purpose and light. Before that, you were just whiskey, cigarettes, and guts on a page for awhile. 

What about before that? 

I hardly remember being 16. That’s when I had my first drink and cigarette, my first kiss. 

16 is really a turbulent time. By then, you’re expected to know what to do with all the new information you have been learning about the world. You were always such a seeker. You questioned things so deeply and profoundly. You saw the darker side of things. Do you remember being a child of 6 when it was all just noise in the trees? Before you started questioning things like hell, and there were just trees and riding bicycles in the gravel and playing in the sand, and it was all so green then, and there could not have been bluer skies down by the lake. But you remember the darker stuff, too, like almost dying twice before eight.  

Some people talk to God because they fear dying or going to hell. I talk to God when I’m hurt or want to figure out how to treat others better. There is a way I try to be that I think makes the world a better place is to recognize the good in people, or namaste. I don’t think that means having no boundaries, or that there aren’t people out to harm, but if we recognize the divine in people, we recognize that they are free agents of creation and destruction and try to bring that forth in them.  

The creative in me calls to the creative in you.