UNIQUELY ME

SOULFUL RADIANCE

UNIQUELY ME HAIKU

I am not this face;

I am the soul that’s within.

I’m uniquely me.

I spent this morning selecting and charging the cost of a replacement Samsung washing machine which brought me no joy whatsoever on this Juneteenth holiday.  As I haltingly inched my way through the Starbucks drive-thru in a vain attempt to improve my demeaner, the movement of a young teen boy caught my attention through the adjacent bushes of a nearby McDonalds.  He was meticulously gathering straw covers and other items that had been cast off by the clueless patrons that had gone before me.  The observation conjured up images of myself doing menial tasks in exchange for minimum pay until the day when I had amassed enough skills in my tool kit to command the means for purchasing household appliances.

I was young and relatively carefree of home mortgages, car payments, credit card debt and all the other accoutrements of life that money buys in exchange for our life hours.  We make good soldiers in those early years since we’re so starry-eyed and bullet proof.   But then the inevitable march of time catches up and we find memory wanes, our chest has lowered, muscle aches and pains arrive with more frequency, body hair disappears from obvious places and appears in too obvious places and our skin begins a gradual loosening process as character lines meander within our smiles.     

The actress Judi Dench has wryly observed some of the characteristics of aging as “Don’t prioritize your looks my friend, as they won’t last the journey.  Your capacity for living in the moment will blossom.  Your instinct for knowing what (and who) is worth your time will grow and flourish like ivy on a castle wall.  Prioritize the uniqueness that make you, you and the invisible magnet that draws in other like-minded souls to dance in your orbit.”

It's called growing old gracefully my friend and it’s a gift denied to many.  So, work on your soul within for that is timeless and where our ultimate destiny lies.  And best of all, soulful character lines are much more radiant than wrinkles.