The Book

Have you ever thought what it means to be 'you', the 'me' and the 'I'?

What it is you actually are other than an ingeniously crafted ensemble of flesh and bone?

I've asked myself these things many times and there is an array of answers that come to mind in the form of flashes and mental-picture-postcards.

Often there is something that comes your way and changes everything, simply e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. The A-Z of your being. You teeter on the brink of sanity and happiness and a tumultuous upheaval of other emotions. All a part of growing up you say, just the way you have been told things will and should turn out. That does not necessarily make it all any easier to handle of course. Just the warning.

We are all a walking, talking, book-and-pen set.

We are all an open book that starts out crisp and blank. The introductory page is filled out by your mama to initiate the celebration that is  your life. The page is turned and the book is left open for others of the world to come and start filling in and leave their mark.  Some of us are a plain open book with smooth, easy to turn pages. Pens come and scratch us at their will. We may want to scream and shout and ogle out words to that effect but we fail wretchedly. We let them scratch and scratch us till the paper tears around where they are scratching and begins to bleed. The ink soaks through the cracks and leaves a mark on many, many pages to come. And sometimes not satisfied with its occupied territory the ink decides to penetrate through to the last page of your life.

Some pen marks are made with beautiful ink of the finest quality and perhaps lightly fragranced too. They make you feel your happiest possible while the words are being written out. You cherish the moments within each moment. But as soon as they lift away and the writing is done with, you are jolted awake from sweet slumber. You stare around and wish and wish for the pen to come back. You wouldn’t mind if it scratched and tore you, if it soaked you in ink or if it ripped you apart. The fragrance is so addictive, the touch so smooth you begin to lose your head. You fall into a frenzy and whip your pages to and fro in infernal fury and frustration.

Perhaps the fragrance was opiated.

Some others are made of stiffer paper with tougher binding. The scratching pens come and try to spoil but the books hold, they will not be tampered with so easily. Made according to rules and built just for following them, these are the volumes that 'survive without unnecessary drama' and shut down every night feeling they have satisfied everyone in life even though their hearts have screamed against them the whole day. But someone inked in the Prologue of their book that life exists only to serve others, 'you' don’t matter to you.

We are each a pen too and we go about making our marks on other books every day, every moment of our lives. We sometimes linger before writing those words we want to in those special books. Think over a lot trying to buy time to decide whether or not we should write what we really want to.

Some of us do write them out and wait for a reader to come read them, for God to listen and answer the prayer you have written down with each letter shaped out with so much love.

Some of us pass up.

Maybe that is the reason we may never know if our prayer has been fulfilled.