I'm in front of fire 150. Feeling like I need to say something. If I don't, my days don't go as well it seems. Seems I have to push the boundary a bit. Be transparent and vulnerable. So when I push the post button it feels I may have gone too far. That no one will ever see me the same again. My posts will be ignored, etc.
I talked to a guy after work yesterday. It was mid-afternoon. I had time and space. The sun was shining. I had a good day on the route.
A few minutes into the conversation he tells me if he ever ran over a child on the mail route he'd go him and off himself. He has a special place for children in his heart because of a bad childhood, he says.
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I'm interested. I am interested in people's stories most of the time. It's been that way my whole life. When I was a child and throughout my teens I spent a lot of time on the telephone talking to whoever. A number of times I would hear this: "It feels like I have known you my whole life." My middle school friend said I talk to you longer than I do my girlfriend.
I don't know why this is. It just is.
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He went on to tell me about the addictions he's had. And how he's been in recovery for 8 years now. How his recovery started the day after he was going to drink himself to death and it didn't work. He just checked himself in.
While we were talking he told me how his body filled with goosebumps as he told me about connecting with a higher power in the recovery book he was given. And when he starts feeling like he wants to break his sobriety his sponsor will call him out of the blue. It can be six months without talking and he appears in my life, he said.
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The first thing I did this morning was read a few Rumi poems. The first two I read I wanted to post here. One of them I would share with the 41 year old man I talked with yesterday.
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The Tent
Outside, the freezing desert night.
This other night inside grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden in here.
The continents blasted,
cities and little towns, everything
become a scorched, blackened ball.
The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
but the real news inside here
is there's no news at all.
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3.2.25