Shattered Dreams

It is worth remembering how fragile many of the things that make life worth living are. Hope, love, dreams, confidence, empathy, positivity are all moods and feelings that can be damaged and broken by the simplest things others say and do.

If we saw someone walking down the street carrying a fragile piece of glass few of us would go up and push, barge or trip them yet that is what we can do with people's feelings. Hopefully most people would offer to help, to share the load or to walk ahead and make sure that obstacles that could get in the way are cleared.

So perhaps we have to realise that everyone is carrying emotional fragility that we cannot see, cannot comprehend, cannot understand. We all have our load so we perhaps should change our behaviour to make sure our comments and actions are designed to support not to undermine.  

The Package

He peeled back the tissue paper carefully and lifted the fragile object from the protective box. It had arrived in one piece, safe. He let it rest in the palm of his hand and gazed upon it in wonder. He had ordered it online and never really believed it would come yet here it was.

He had subscribed to the service after a recommendation from a friend who could see he was struggling, finding it hard to communicate. He had dithered for weeks, although he didn’t know he had been, he didn’t know the word. Finally he had taken the plunge and for the last few months, every Monday, the package would arrive despite his doubts.

He stared at the strange carving, the rounded shapes and the straight lines and the astonishing flow. He placed it upon his tongue, closed his mouth and let it dissolve. That strange sensation as it filled the empty cavern and finally emerged through his lips.

That was the magical moment, the first time he heard his own mouth say it. ‘Beautiful’. That was the word that had been sent, ‘Beautiful’. He loved it.

Over the weeks he had built up new language, new expressions but this was the one that would change his life. This was the one he had been waiting for.

He picked up the two cups of tea and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. He pushed open the door with his foot and looked at her sitting upright in their bed. She stared back at him.

‘You are …. Beautiful,’ he said

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

Language can be the food of love

New Day, New Start

This was it, new day, new start.

He was putting behind the years of doubt, of cynicism, of anticipated failure. Today was the day he was going to turn his life round, a more positive him. He was no longer going to let the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune dampen his spirit and belief. He was new, reborn

For the first time in over ten years he was going to leave the house. He was going to take his inventions and patents to a solicitor and he was going to let the world decide whether he was genius of dunce, fool or visionary. Dear God, even his simple machine for creating electricity from dust had powered the house for six years.

The boots on his feet felt strange, the coat like a straight jacket but he was not going to be ‘broken’ this time. With his plans for the sun powered desalination plant and sketches for his ‘pop up’ environmental card construct’ homes amongst other ideas under his arm he opened his front door.

The sun hit his eyes, the air chilled his lungs and he took one giant step forward. He would not let life knock him back. Not today, oh no, not today.

Who knows what life and the world would be like today if the neighbour’s dog had not evacuated its bowels on his doorstep earlier that morning.

Sitting in his armchair seeing his plans and boots going up in a curiously scented fire he relaxed. ‘Same sht, different day,’ he thought soberly.