Thinking out the Kitchen Window

This morning I caught myself, as I often do, staring out the kitchen window as I puttered my way around; washing dishes, putting things away and tidying the counters. My mind began to drift as I realized that what I was seeing is not my own, in many ways, nor is it what I wish to see.

I long to be in a little house, one of my own, and it should be on a quiet street backing onto a field, a forest, a haven of nature and all its beauty. Perhaps, even more, I’d like that little house to be IN the field, forest, or even the mountains, a magical place full of beauty, lessons, real life and true survival.

Instead, I am in an older home, rented, on the side of a major road. A place where I can watch as life, people, cars, all pass by at an alarming speed, the noise rising above and infecting my thoughts, and the mere thought of allowing my child to play and roam freely through our large back yard while I stand at that sink doing dishes causes my heart to skip a beat and my heart to tie in knots.

I wish for the simpler times, simpler in ways that seem to justify the hard, back breaking, painful side that also fully encompassed that life. Worries and concerns that were, perhaps, life threatening, changing, but real. Work, a lot of it, that fostered true appreciation for what was had, held, cherished, consumed.

I think about how different, how special, beautiful and healthy this world could be if only things were just a little simpler, not to be confused with easier.

Later, as I walked down the street, a quick trip to the corner store, my mind was still challenging the world, weaving words together, thoughts I wanted to get out, when I slowly began to take in the sounds of cars that were passing by; the whiiiirs of motors, the constant whispers, shelu, shelu, shelu, as tires tread through the muck of melting snow, the sudden blast of muffled music as a car speeds past.

I felt a little as though I was being smothered by a thick blanket of pollution, aside from the obvious reasons, it was as though all that surrounded me was infecting me with something that I didn’t want, rapidly taking over everything. A poison that was preventing me from feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting and hearing the beauty, stillness; that place from which we all come was being drowned.  

I was thinking how I just wanted out of this city, this place, these “problems and issues”, I wanted to escape to a quieter place all my own. I thought about what I really do want and need in my life, for my life.

And then, I was standing in the middle of an intersection, having been narrowly missed by a car that had mindlessly sped through the red light, as it came to a stop only two feet beside me.

The thoughts swirling around my mind cemented as truth.

The way that we are living should be different…

…it should be nothing like this!