Whisper of a Thrill
Soon enough, I’ll be dead. Of course, I don’t know when that’ll be - but in a way I was dead already. Sleeping used to be the highlight of my day, until the highlight of my day was replaced with insomnia. It came out of nowhere. It was as if I woke up one day and realized my hours were being spent sedated, as the world around me carried on. Over time, I came to realize there was something missing, I didn’t know what, but I knew that it wasn’t too late to seek it.
I currently live in a small town called Delafield, WI, where the surrounding ‘neighbors’ have jogging outfits for everyday of the week. It’s exhausting to watch these individuals, these families. Material families. All of the houses look the same in my subdivision, each one painted with their own color to give the illusion that we aren’t all built alike. But I love the house I live in. It’s ugly. Unlike any of the other houses around, it’s a wooden rectangle with windows outlined in white. Bikes scattered on the front porch, each belonging to one of my three younger brothers, cars in the driveway neglected by our garage from the large useless items hidden within. I’m sure it bothers our neighbors, but their perfect houses topped off with perfectly cut green grass that always is cluttered with fertilizer warnings…well, that bothers me. They have this notion that the picture perfect world is the way to go about life and it seems as if our house could be the smudge on that picture. But, that smudge isn’t a bad thing.
It makes me think of a gate in Nikko, Japan, called the Yomeimon Gate, it’s an extravagant gate with astonishing designs and carvings intertwined within it. But if you look closely, on one of the pillars, one of the carvings was carved upside down. It’s the only spot that doesn’t follow the pattern. It was said by a great physicist, that the unique print was put in place by the Gods to show that man is not perfect at their peak of assuming they are. Notice how the words ‘unique print’ were used, rather than ‘imperfection’. It’s because we learn from these unique mishaps, it reminds us to dream big, yet keep a foot on the ground when taking that first leap.
It’s a great example to feed off of. I would love to introduce my neighbors to the Slow Movement, but as Carl Honore has put more than once - How do we slow down in a world built for speed? And he’s right, it takes a critical moment in your life to realize how you’re living your life…and if it’s the way you want to live it. You have to ask yourself, “What truly is important?”.
I am so grateful that I had this ‘Aha!’ moment early on in life. At my age, one would assume I haven’t truly experienced anything significant yet and to some extent they’re correct, but depending on how you look at it, I believe in some respect I’ve experienced more in my life thus far, than my thirty-some year old neighbor next door. She’s still stuck on whether the blue or red jogging outfit goes better with the new Nike’s.
I’ve had my eyes opened as to how to view the world in more way than one. And I hope through these blogs, I can reach out to a few people who are searching for the same thing I am. We may not know what it is exactly, but we’ll know when that whisper of a thrill takes us beyond our wildest dreams and we start living life to better ourselves and others without thinking about it. If we can’t paint one big beautiful picture with a few smudges, hopefully we can make a couple of nice ones before we’re taken to that next place.
Recent posts by this author
- Build It Toni And They Will Come - July 5th, 2009
- Nine Years To Live - March 15th, 2009
