Tiny Points of Life

Set Loose Your Inner Penguin

New Years Eve.
Put away the headlines for a minute.
They’re going to keep coming. I promise.
So here’s a resolution.
Let’s resolve to excavate ourselves.
To climb out from beneath the rubble of bad news.
Let’s lower a bucket into the abandoned well of the self.
Down, down, down. Younger. Younger.
Stop. Let it fill.
Now pull. Hand over hand over hand.
Let’s pull it all up. The light. The color. The thrill. Remember?
Let’s pull up everything we have forgotten.
Let’s resolve to pour it over our heads.
To fling its sticky, star-flecked fluorescence against the dreariness.
Sure, I know. The headlines. The horrors. The incomprehensibility.
It’s all going to keep coming.
So let’s resolve, right now, to push back.
By living from the inside out.
By remembering, vividly, everything we love in the world.
Let’s resolve to take Emerson’s advice, for once,
And drink the wild air.
Let’s honor the dead,
By living in our time.
Let’s kick the cage door open,
Free the bird of the soul,
Even if it is flightless and waddles.
Let’s resolve to light the Roman candle
Buried in the heart of every last second
By claiming joy as a birthright
By loving ferociously
By feeling without apology
By surrendering to exuberance.
Let’s resolve to set the whole place ablaze
With gratitude
With kindness
With forgiveness
Let’s resolve to loose that little, inner penguin,
Whenever and wherever the feeling strikes.
No matter who is watching.
No matter what they may think of us.

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