Just a Suitcase

Years ago I packed my suitcase full of hopes and dreams
And full of clothes and things
I set out to see the world ahead
Along the way I temporarily settled here and briefly stayed there

Sometimes my hopes got left behind
Regrets were added to the bag, mistakes
And delusions replaced my dreams
All the while I still had clothes and things

Life once took me to an interesting place
Where I dropped and lost my suitcase
When I found it everything was broken and tattered
I left it there, thinking none of it mattered

After that, I tried going around without anything
Sometimes revisiting places I'd once already seen
I found that while being free was easy
It felt empty

So I went back and got that tattered suitcase
I emptied the garbage
Deciding to add things of worth
What had all this wandering given me?

I placed in it the people I've known and places I've been
The experiences and lessons given
And maybe in the future, if our paths ever meet
I can share this part of my soul, give you part of me

So what's in this bag now
I hope nothing anymore for me
Only things I can give to you
Just to name a few

Love amidst hate
Hope in a dark reality
Kindness and selflessness
Acceptance and patience

I hope to inspire you
Rekindle your hopes and dreams
Remind you of the beauty of the earth
Make you consider the world and your place in it

This tattered suitcase and its seemingly empty inside
May not appear like much
And maybe it is not
But that's for you to decide

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Stained Glass

"Our stained glass means nothing without light."   It's a lyric by Sleeping at Last from the song "Sight" that has been running through my mind over and over again for weeks now.   It is a powerful image.   I have always been mesmerized by stained glass windows.  I remember sitting in my grandparents' Lutheran church as a child contemplating the scenes they depicted of Christ.  But at night without the light, they lose their spell.   In darkness, they become nothing.    In this advent season, remember the Christ who came as light of the world.  Remember our lives are nothing without this Light.  Soak in the beauty of these stained glass windows  as the light beams through.  May our lives be just as beautiful as we allow the Light to shine within and through us. 
Read more

Stationary

I have the strong desire to write a new post.  I'm not sure why.  I've been uninterested in doing so for over a year now.  But tonight with only one hand, I'm feeling enough of an urge to lead me to plunk at the individual letters on the keyboard at a rate half of what I'm used to in order to create this.  While doing so, I've opened Pandora.  I've not listened to music on Pandora for over two years now.  Upon opening, I looked through the 20+ stations I'd created in the span of six or seven years and I recalled the various times in my life.  The times that lead me to create these stations because the music somehow reflected an emotion I felt or an experience I had or I simply delighted in the particular style of organization in the sounds.  I have found these small paths that I'd created years before and I allowed myself to travel down some of them, to remember these times in my life.  Music is powerful and I can tell this is going to be a ...
Read more

Signs

My mom and youngest sister came to visit me in Chicago just over a week ago.  Being from Idaho, we don't typically walk to places there.  It's too far- people (apparently) like their wide open space.  While out and about, I tried to give them landmarks they could set their eyes on so they would know how far we had left to go. My sister and I set out to pick up our Thai take-out.  As we came to an intersection, I told her the place was just past Pizza Hut.  Confused, she searched around for the Pizza Hut.  I had to tell her it was the building literally across the intersection, right in front of us.  As we laughed about how obvious it was, she told me she had been looking for the sign and not the actual building.  And I made a comment about how that could be used for a good analogy... Sometimes we look for the signs all around when the landmark is right in front of us. or even Sometimes we're searching for the sign pointing to the sight show...
Read more