Life and Death of Summer

Last week of work for me before I get the summer off before I take a week of mental health break. It's been trying and what not. Lots of little things: small victories and small defeats, but we'll see what comes of anything. I'm not too much in the mood to talk about myself, so here's some random writing:

It should be of note that Edna Darling is a completely ordinary woman. She has never been featured on the cover of Gardeners Bimonthly, nor has she been recognized as the premier bassist in the Midwest. Her name has not graced the surface of a state volleyball trophy won in championships of her senior year, and not one person has heard the poetry that she writes and keeps under her mattress during rainy days. In short, she is a completely normal, albeit unrecognized, human being. What reason then is there to talk about her?

There. Right there, in the time that it took for us to cover her non-accomplishments, Edna did something extraordinary. In her living room furnished with a few antiques and mostly IKEA furniture, walls covered in lethargic yellow paint almost 10 years old, and TV that has not been turned on in 4 months, she has done the impossible. She has decided to take a class in yoga.

Now you might ask: Why is this so important? and I will tell you. It isn't. No, what she is doing is something so impossible and bizarre that it is actually changing the entire way that she perceives herself and her surroundings. The act of doing. An act so controversial and exhilarating that is has been classified as something best not done in sight of your loved ones.

What effect does this 'doing' have on the eventual heat death of the universe, the Turkish revival occurring a world away, or the steady rise of octopi as the dominant form on intelligent life? Nothing. It has no visible effect on anything other than one Edna Darling. Even then, she will quit after the third yoga session and go back to her normally routine life. But, that act of breaking the steady and repetitive march from birth to grave has allowed her to momentarily stand as the pinnacle of conscious life forms. 

It was for that brief second that Edna Darling became one of the most important objects in the universe with her bout of free will, and second only to the continuing existence of chili cheese fries in this particular dimension. For that brief second she became important. Most humans have one or two bouts of free will, and they hardly even recognize it. Some have many, and are considered either brilliant or insane (mostly both.) But choices are sitting there, just waiting for someone to take them in hand and run with them. To be, even for a brief second, important.