Be On The Watch – Wednesday August 10th

Today I was able to THINK instead of just worry. Thinking is proactive, while worrying is just brain noise. I try and think often, but it ends up being loud, staticky anxiety. If you could record and amplify what happens in my brain when I try and imagine or plan my future, it would sound like a cat walking across a synthesizer. It would look like one of those paintings that elephants make with their trunks.

Yesterday a friend sent me a link to a commercial, and the voice over was a Charles Bukowski poem. I searched for the poem, and as I read the words I got teary eyed. I work in advertising,so it pains me a little to admit that I hadn’t known this poem until I saw the Levi’s ad that featured it. That’s how life goes sometimes though, you have to be willing to find inspiration anywhere. These were the exact words I needed to read to put my thoughts in order.

The Laughing Heart
-Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Be on the watch. That phrase is like a kick to my heart. I can’t keep looking away from the opportunities that I’m given. I want to have the kind of life that I can tell my children I chose, I pursued, I worked and arranged. And I was able to weather the hard parts because I wanted what I was living. So I’m starting now, and I’m going to become the person I knew I could be in the third grade.