You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Knowing that the future is now.
I sat in a cantina the other night and I looked into the eyes of a man who has been to the depths of despair.
A year ago his marriage was a fire cracker blowing up in his hand. It was untenable anger and dissatisfaction.
A thousand court maneuvers later, he is divorced. Like an appendix that is swollen and must be removed, the disease that was holding him back, that was making him sick every day, is gone from his life.
But like a brain trauma victim learning to walk all over again, he needs to stand and take his first step. He is afraid, he is anesthetized, he needs a shot of adrenaline in the chest.
As the warm winds of Nashville swoop around us, the beer flows and the stories of what can be fill the air. In the background the melodic rhythm of another pop band trying to impress another Nashville music producer is the focal point of the night. All eyes are directed at the stage.
I look to my friend.
“Dude, it’s time to turn it around.”
“I know,” he says blankly.
“Look into that sky.”
His eyes gaze up into the twilight.
The night sky is deepening, suppressing the orange glow of the day.
I point to the heavens. There is a deep interminable blue in the atmosphere where day and night collide. This place takes your eye and leads it to some point that is impossible to see.
“Where Am I looking,” he says.
“Exactly,” I respond like the Dali Lama of beer. “The possibilities are beyond that glow of purple,” I say with all the sagaciousness of a fortune cookie.
He laughs at my esoteric gibberish.
The sky is magnificent tonight. It is a pallet of blues and purples with thin brush strokes that curl around the gravity of the universe. The horizon is barely visible through the darkening hue of approaching night as a single star pokes its head out of the darkness for the evening.
My friend’s eyes search the heavens. He is a talented writer and musician. He knows that the last year of his life was an anchor chained to his creative neck. He knows the weight of that anguish dragged him to the depths of solitude and depression that fills many going through divorce.
He fought with his ex wife and money hungry attorneys and judges who don’t care. He dealt with step children who had no respect and sheriff’s deputies serving warrants at un-Godly hours. His creative muse was stifled, choked to death like a warrior who is beheaded before he can stand.
As he sits as this metallic mesh table, a Blue Moon as his lighthouse, he says, “I see what you are talking about.”
If he was a school bus driver, he might not understand. If he was a doctor, this leap of faith might not be an empirical equation that engaged his mind.
But this man with a creative soul understands this moment. This man with music filling his ears and pumping through his heart sees into the void and understands. He is a dream weaver, a musician, a lyrical savant. He sees the cosmos, the deep purple haze of possibilities floating on the soft caress of the Earth, and he realizes it is time.
A smile of realization surfaces on my friend’s face. I have not seen this light in his eyes for a year. He grabs his glass and raises it silently in my direction.
We toast.
CLINK.
It is a sound that nobody else in the bar can hear.
But he hears the clink and so do I.
It is a silent bond that the glass is half full and it’s time to shift gears.
It’s time to stand and walk to the end of the dock.
It’s time to howl at the moon and listen to the splash of the surf lapping at the shore.
It’s time to let life know you are alive once again.
“Hey universe, I’m over hear. Can you hear me.”
His soul calls to the stars and they twinkle their response.
The check is in the mail. The case is closed.
New chapter dude. Time to engage the years we have left and live them like they were meant to be lived.
The future is waiting. It’s always been there. You just needed to stare at the horizon, that fleeting dash of purple possibility and know that you belong.
And that is crazy.™