Sunday Morning

“Sunday Morning” My eyes are pried open by the sun peeking past leaves outside my north-facing window, its curtain softly swaying to the tune of a warm June breeze, whose sweet scents seem to float on the perky chirps and some other muffled sounds of morning. It feels good to sleep-in past dawn, as I let out a gigantic yawn, stretching my arms up and out over my head and straightening my legs all the way to the end of an oh-so-cozy bed… that is shamelessly inviting me to cuddle under the sheet for just a little while longer.

 “Mm, it feels good,” I think to myself, “the start of a new week with absolutely nothing on my day’s agenda, and at the same time a fond farewell to another week past. Let’s see, what did I do last week?”

My still-sleepy brain does not reply. “Come on, I must have accomplished something in 7x24 hours!”

But a quick survey produces nothing. “Well, ok, everybody has an off-week now and then, how about the week before?” A pause, another search, and now “or the week(s) before that?” Again, nothing.

I feel a wrinkle of concern creeping onto my brow. “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? I’m living my life, weeks are passing, and I’m not accomplishing anything beyond a few routine things done at work, but nothing really worth talking about. Oh, sure, I guess I enjoyed a few nice meals, maybe a couple of ok conversations… but have I really done anything significant… helped anyone, built or improved anything at home, at work, in the whole world?”

Now I sit up and swing my feet to the floor, stand up and look at my bed, accusingly, thinking “It’s partially your fault, you know, so comfy and innocently coaxing me to laze away my free day, instead of getting something done for a change.” 

I roughly pull up the sheet, fluff the pillow, and give my mattress a quick knee to the midsection for good measure, still glaring at it.  It doesn’t flinch, because it feels no pain, nor does it apologize, and I don’t blame it. I glance at the only mirror (a full-length job on a closet door), flinching slightly at my disheveled image… hair matted and askew, eyes stuck half-open, a few coarse whiskers popping up like I hadn’t shaved in days, even though I had. “What a mess,” I say, spotting a frown emerging on my shattered face, above a pitiful naked, bony body deplete of real muscle, “and what’s worse,” I continue, staring into my own eyes, “you worthless so and so aren’t accomplishing a damned thing!”

 I can’t look any longer, and head for the bathroom, brush my teeth hard until it hurts, gargle until my mouth is on fire, wash the crud out of my eyes, empty out from my bowels and bladder what remains of last night’s forgotten meal, and get under the shower.

I feel the scalding water’s extreme heat beating down against my crazy hair and washing over the rest of my pitiful bod, just soaking in its soothing massage, “Calm down, Johnny boy,” I say to myself, “Nobody really accomplishes much of anything good in this life, and every guy looks like crap in the morning. Just stand here, let the heat wash away the negative vibes, and pull your thoughts together. The past is past. 

True, I can’t remember a single thing from the infinite number of years that passed before I existed, but nobody else can either, so let’s not dwell on that. And sure, I could have been a more forward-thinking or serious kid, maybe reading more books, or intensely practicing some skill that might have made me rich or famous or otherwise more successful. 

And I could have made better choices in my life, avoided mistakes (like challenging a 6 foot 6, 230-pound guy named ‘Jeep’ to a fight, for being an asshole, only to get the shit kicked out of me… it turns out that, though he definitely was an asshole, he didn’t kill me, which he easily could have, given that we were alone at 2am in the middle of nowhere, so in retrospect, I guess he was probably ok… and I was an idiot).  I could have worked harder, made a better contribution to the planet, or done something to justify my luck in finally being born after infinite millennia of not existing.”

Finally clean and dried after my shower, I return to the closet mirror, run my fingers through my plastered-wet hair, and continue my self-evaluation, “but at the same time,” I rationalize, “we’re all here by sheer luck, and most other people could have worked harder, too. And most of them have probably made their own share of mistakes and bad decisions. Bottom line, none of us can live even a single moment twice. We make our choices in life, and one thing is certain… we can’t go back. Every decision is a crossroads, and the branch in the road we choose determines our fate. We can never retrace our steps and choose the other road. The big sign will say, “Sorry, dumb-dumb… you had your chance.”

Still looking morosely at my reflection, a lightbulb in my brain starts to blink to the ‘on’ position, and I shout to myself, “But hark!” I suddenly realize that now is the time to move on, take what I can from the past, but otherwise forget my failings, and focus on what I can do today, tomorrow, this week, and every day that I have left… before my one and only shot at this miracle of life is extinguished… before it is time for me to surrender to the infinite vacuum of my endless years of nonexistence that lies hereafter.

The reality seizes me that though my eyes weren’t wide open in the past, they are right now, and if I have the will to keep them wide open, then I can make today and my entire future exactly what I would like it to be… what it can be, and no less. I know that my would-be reality must start and end with the golden rule, and I swear to my clean but comical naked image, “I will do unto others (and particularly unto my loved ones and those who place their trust in me) as I would have them do unto me. That means an absolute commitment to my own honesty, love, empathy, warmth, trust, courage, selflessness, positivity, helpfulness, forgiveness, defense of human rights and the beauties of our world, and the confrontation of evil.

“What the hell?”, I shout, a smile bursting out on that idiotic creature in the mirror, now dancing a ridiculous naked jig. “You dumb-ass, worthless piece of shit… you are going to save this world!”

“Whew”, I acknowledge with a lopsided grin still lingering on my cheap closet mirror, “that’s a lot to spontaneously take on, only minutes out of a perfectly comfortable sack on an otherwise lazy Sunday morning, for a guy who hasn’t accomplished much of anything so far”.

I rush the few feet across my tiny studio apartment to my kitchen-nook, grab a quick bowl of toasted oat cereal, throw open my desktop, thinking “Screw those laptops with their touch cursors, and those bleeping touchpads, too (pardon my French).” I quickly type, “I’m going hunting today… for ASSHOLES… True to a variant of the golden rule, I’m going to do unto them, BEFORE they can do unto me!”

“YES”, I scream, jumping up from my highboy stool, my right arm jutting into the air in celebration, but my still-naked hip crashing into the table and sending my cereal bowl skittering off the edge to clank, miraculously unbroken but badly spilled, onto the hardwood floor below.

Only a few minutes are required to cleanup my mess, finish breakfast, and pour myself into a blueprint for my newly committed life mission to love my loved ones, then save America and the planet from the totalitarian government parasites who want to subject us to their rule and suck the life and joy out of us.

My fingers start flying across the keyboard, and out comes: www.dearroxi.com Who knew?