A series of essays....
Courtesy of Webpackaging
....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E. Hughes
Occasionally, certain prompts bring about reasons to share past stories with all of you. Several days ago I received a new comment on a story I’d written and published in June of 2017, shortly after the all too real nightmare our nation was abruptly thrown into began: The placement of a very strange and harmful man in the White House.
Truth be told, the nightmare began late in the evening of November 8, 2016, and it has not diminished (in fact, it has only intensified) since then.
I recalled a story I’d been told when I was quite young that instructed me to place each unsettled feeling or negative emotion in its own ‘pretty little box’ and confront each one separately and only when I felt the time was right to do so. It’s important to open each box and comprehend the importance of its contents within your life and deal with it completely before moving on. This is the origin of my story and I would like to share it with all of you once again.
Pretty Little Boxes
June of 2017
Life seems to be charging towards me in fragments.
They are small, broken pieces that float in the air like tiny feathers at the mercy of an afternoon breeze; sunshine enhanced bits of reality and imagination intertwining with each shift and subtle nuance of emotion. They are multi-colored cotton threads of fact and fiction that float along in a suspended state, oblivious to the passage of time or thought or movement. They are waiting, waiting....for me? Shrugging my shoulders abjectly, I attempt to carry-on as a functioning adult.
It is imperative that we set aside the time to assess our lives, take a personal inventory of our emotional possessions, even when (especially when) the fragments feel more like shards of glass rather than innocent feathers. We are human. We bleed. The lifeblood from our wounds spills down upon the soil at our feet and gravitates to the small streams and rivers that flow out to the sea....from whence we came. We have traveled full-circle.
I spend many days collecting my life’s fragments and placing them in tiny boxes. Some of these boxes hold dozens of pieces while others may be limited to only a few, even one, single piece. If the shard is an enormous challenge for me, it might remain in solitary confinement within its cardboard prison until I can, finally, come to terms with it; It’s label of importance scribbled in crimson with the blood from a recent wound.
Am I good enough?
Will this major change in my life be for the better?
How well do I deal with people who hate?
When is it time to try harder or time to give up on something?
Why do I allow self-doubt to control me?
Self worth...
Am I strong enough to handle conflicts with my adult children?
Instead of wiping out your pain, I should have sat with you and helped
You get through it! Life is learning how to suffer and survive, as well
As sharing life’s happiness.
Issues, issues, issues. Yes, there is a box here for everything!
If I am lucky, the containers are neatly stacked and labeled. Over time, they begin to resemble hand-painted, wooden blocks tucked away in the far corner of a child’s nursery, sometimes neglected but never forgotten about. How does one forget about his own soul?
Spiritless, often cruel, and unsympathetic examples of soulless figures do exist throughout history and the melodic tempo of time.
When a prime example of this behavior happens to be a major political leader who guides the people down a winding and certain path of destruction with open notes of malice and contempt being his preferred Pied Piper's melody, we must become deeply concerned! We must become aware of the long term, negative consequences attached to his current actions and how they will affect all of us within our own emotional and physical capacity.
When a prime example of this behavior happens to be a major political leader who guides the people down a winding and certain path of destruction with open notes of malice and contempt being his preferred Pied Piper's melody, we must become deeply concerned! We must become aware of the long term, negative consequences attached to his current actions and how they will affect all of us within our own emotional and physical capacity.
History has a way of proving that it is possible to exist without possessing a soul, without a personal check and balance system that, normally, comprises our individual emotional and moral standards. Some people exist to nourish their bodies, alone; their souls, having been sold to the highest bidder for shiny, earthly trinkets, have been professionally extracted and replaced by blank eyes that define the non-existence of rational behavior.
Standing high above us on the mountain’s peak, he spreads his arms and surrounds himself with inhuman, callous, and hateful trolls that have been cut from the same cloth. Looking down upon the living souls groveling below, his ambition is to draw them deep into his fold by rejuvenating the hate and bigotry that has been bubbling right beneath their feet since the beginning of time.
Standing high above us on the mountain’s peak, he spreads his arms and surrounds himself with inhuman, callous, and hateful trolls that have been cut from the same cloth. Looking down upon the living souls groveling below, his ambition is to draw them deep into his fold by rejuvenating the hate and bigotry that has been bubbling right beneath their feet since the beginning of time.
It is important to be able to counterbalance such hatefulness with wisdom. With a ‘Sword of Damocles’ hanging right above us, it is even more important to be able to sort out the contents of our ‘pretty little boxes’ and, in turn, weaken the power of hatefulness that tends to dilute our wisdom.
The collective fragments form larger pieces as they settle within the boxes. Will time and purpose allow my thoughts to unite and form their own boundaries and shapes like puzzle pieces waiting to be snapped back together in order to recreate the original and loving picture they were cut from?
It is important that the multi-colored threads of my life reunite into manageable sizes that, with my help, will complete a coherent tapestry of the journey I will continue to follow while marching to the cadence of:
Patience. Time. Understanding. Joy. Happiness. Hope. Balance. Spirit. Desire. Healing. Wisdom. Love.
And yet, the fragments keep coming. They are not shy.
Learning how to manage the contents of each box with continued enlightenment, I open each one as if it were a little gift to myself. While tucking an emptied box aside, I am one step closer on my road to understanding that our dreams, hopes, and desires really can come true. If we work hard, love one another, and remember to believe, we can empty our ‘little boxes’ and gradually fill our hearts with the kindness and love we all deserve.
Learning how to manage the contents of each box with continued enlightenment, I open each one as if it were a little gift to myself. While tucking an emptied box aside, I am one step closer on my road to understanding that our dreams, hopes, and desires really can come true. If we work hard, love one another, and remember to believe, we can empty our ‘little boxes’ and gradually fill our hearts with the kindness and love we all deserve.
Copyright © 2019 by Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved
