It’s Monday morning. You roll over and plop your feet on the floor, just having woken from a dream about the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man overtaking the municipal zoo, and all the animals getting really hopped up on sugar. The chimpanzees are completely and utterly frenzied. One of them was using wet wipes to get marshmallow off its face, just when you were thrust back into the world of the awake. You shudder.
And you think, or you might have even say it out loud, “Oh great. Monday.”
Personally, I like a Monday. Not as much as a Wednesday, but Mondays are good. Of course, I am no longer in the 9 to 5 working world, where I have to be at the office all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I still work quite a bit, but mostly for free these days. So now, I always feel like weekends are a bit over-rated. It could have a lot to do with my Introversion. But all-in-all, I think people try to cram too much into the weekend, especially in the form of young families.
Monday, to me, is the day that waves the little white flag, but in a good way. Surrender, give up. Give in. Once again, Mr. Slate isn’t standing in front of my front-loader down at the rock quarry, soooo. Yabba. Dabba. Doo.
But many people simply don’t like Mondays. It means they have to go back to their jobs, which many of them hate. They have to be around people they don’t like and do things that seem repetitive, and meaningless. And in that way, the world can seem a little disdainful and cruel.
I read a quote this morning by Lucy Larcom. It said,
“If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.” Of course, Lucy Larcom was an old teacher, and a poet who lived in the mid-1800s. So she may have been literally speaking of the pot-bellied stove in the classroom.
But, minutes before I read that, I got an email in my inbox from 23 and Me. They let me know, that I have 19 new people who I share DNA with, just waiting for me in my DNA Relatives area. Of course, I know this is all digital, but it is a nice picture isn’t it? Nineteen people, there, in the DNA party room, standing over by the table with the big white sheet cakes with blue icing that say, “Who’s Your Daddy?” and dipping their little crystal glasses in the fruit punch bowl, all the while keeping their pinkies extended.
Truly, there they are. When you think of the thing, it is kind of remarkable. There, at this website, I found some 1188 people who are relatives. From all over the world, cousins, connected. There’s Melvin, and Kier, and Harry, and Drew. And with each one of these, we share a pair of grandparents, somewhere along the lines. Connected by their blood, our blood.
They might be right-wing fundamentalists, or radical supports of universal health care, or LGBT activists, or military captains in the Army. They might be a worker a Disney World, or a protester in Hong Kong (probably not in my case), but there they are, all of them connected by a common strand.
And when you think of it that way — when you drive down the road, or stand in the line at the grocery, we all are connected in this way. Through that common human strand. Of course, some of them are the drunk uncle that shows up for the Christmas party. And yet.
Most of us, are trying.
Maybe we are on a different path, or a different idea. But we all have our struggles, our joys. We can’t all be alike, and truthfully, we don’t have to like all the drunk uncles.
Yet.
If we can just appreciate that we are all in the same classroom.
If we can kindle the fires to warm the place.
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“Life is NOT short! It’s just by the time we catch up to appreciating it…we’ve already left life at least halfway behind us.”
― Sanjo Jendayi
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“When we don’t appreciate others, we gradually fail to see the positive side of other people.
When others don’t appreciate us, we fail to see the positive side of our own selves.”
― Awdhesh Singh
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“I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
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