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They say and I
believe through experience that the darkest hours of the night are those
just before dawn. In those bleak and dreary hours all of our deepest
thoughts shoot through our mind: "If I had just done this or if I had
just said that!?!" We have all experienced them. Even Snoopy sitting
atop his dog house with his typewriter always starts his novel with, "It
was a dark and stormy night....." We think of horrible things that are
yet to come and even in the coldest of nights break out into a sweat.
"My goodness." we say to ourselves, " there aren’t enough people dumb
enough to nominate her, much less enough to elect her to the
presidency." "Another Manning in the super bowl, could it be that the
brothers will win back to back super bowl?" I shudder to think it all.
We picture our own death or see the IRS pounding down our door. We see
the mother in law pulling up in the drive way with a U-Haul. We think of
the things we did at work or the things we forgot to do at work. The
mind wanders through the maze of thoughts with the hope of finding our
way out, to slip back into the world of dream before the dawning of the
new day.
We all have those nights when the morning finally comes the bed looks as
if a grenade went off sometime after we turned down the sheets. There is
no age limit. From youngest to oldest we all find those nights when we
cannot grip sleep and the time passes at an infinite passing as if the
world suddenly went to slow-motion. Drinks of water and staring out the
window only seems to slow it even more. Because of the hour of the night
and the stillness of the outside, we feel as if the rest of the world is
in blissful slumber while we go through the agony of the next minute.
Finally, after what seems like an eternity we wander back to the bed and
finally we wander off to sleep for a time.
I am sure that more learned people would have volumes to say about our
condition and why we go through these things. I feel that it is the
times and circumstances in which we find ourselves. We live in a society
where its me and my and I and no care is given to we, you and they.
Decisions are made knowing that dire consequences will result down the
road. We may not be the one making that decision, but most of us wind up
being collaterally damaged because of it. Just like we are all hooked
together by the so called "six degrees of separation" we are all caught
up in bad decisions by the same measure. So how do we separate ourselves
from the bad decisions or collateral damage? Well, unless you have moved
into a cave and become a complete hermit, we don’t separate ourselves.
We can minimize our exposure, we can surround ourselves with people who
we know or hope to we know don’t make those decisions that pick us up
and carry us on in their wave of self destruction. We can try to educate
our family and friends and hope they will use their God given common
sense in making life decisions. Even, after all of this there are no
guarantees.
It must have been on one of those sleepless, dreary nights that the
writer Edgar Alan Poe wrote The Raven. Poe, finding himself in those
hours of dark self pity, took the time and opportunity to make a
beautiful poem out of his dismal circumstances. Maybe like Poe we can
take advantage of the moment and change it into something positive. Sure
as anything if that hour grips us we must also find a way to turn it
around to our favor. Like Hemingway we must convince ourselves that the
sun also rises. There is another day breaking and with it we have a new
opportunity, a new start, an new chance to rectify any wrong we did
yesterday and make something great happen in this new day. If we do
enough good things and minimize the negative things we do, the less time
we will wake and hang in the bleakness of those wee dark hours.
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