Back to the Question

Just got off the phone with you.  I was washing the last of the dishes from camping this weekend and thinking about the questions I’ve asked you over the years that you haven’t answered.

It still amazes me how you can always get me to be so honest with myself, but you brush my questions aside as though I hadn't asked. And I always let you. Even though you are the one who taught me not to avoid them, how to find the answers, to get the damned thing over with so I could stop wasting years living a dishonest life. Even if it hurt. You taught me how it was going to hurt anyway – that’s just how life works.

But the joy is greater when you are honest, when your subconscious mind is clear to sleep at night. It saved my life, that advice. More than once. Rather than have the obsessive thoughts stuck on repeat in my brain like  a cassette stuck in the player of your old fiero, it’s easier to answer the questions and move on. Move on. That’s what you taught me. 

You can’t move on until you answer the questions at hand. Well, you can, but then you keep having to come back to them anyway, so you might as well just answer them and then go forward. That’s what you taught me. Sometimes, it is my undoing, but overall it keeps my life simple. Even though my mother would argue otherwise. Maybe a few other people too, but I think their lives are complicated, so . . .