Ghosts

After lunch today I decided to take off and see what I could accomplish, consulting with ghosts. In this case one, a boy I knew in gradeschool once, who, when he was 17, sped down a long gravel road much too fast, and grew no older from there on. I didn't learn of it until months after, when one morning at breakfast, I saw his face all of ten inches high on the cover of the SW Metro section, as a lead photo in a piece on his family coping with his loss. We barely knew each other, but the shock of someone you knew, and so young, dying... I still have the newspaper story, buried somewhere.

And of course, we shared a first name.

Why did I go visit the tree that took his life? I guess I was hoping that something that provoked me once would provoke me again. But along that hot tarmac -- they have since paved the road -- I found nothing for me. And everything, too. At the bottom, life either has meaning, or it has none at all. If the former, then there is a reason I am here, a reason I must fulfill, and if the latter, life is not worth living. If it's true, or a lie, I don't care, but I'd rather it be with a meaning.

So if life has a meaning, then my talents are for a purpose. I was given sight that I could see, not that I could blind myself in pity. And I was given a tongue to speak, not to cease speaking out of fear. Talents aren't just gifts, they're responsibilities.

I'm not "cured". Life is still the mess it was yesterday. But by the time I was home, my mind was turning to the stories buried within me, without even trying.