Crystal Days

Some days seem so long, stretching out towards the night like arms reaching across a widening gap between thrust-apart lovers. We know, only too well though, that very night time will be upon us before we have even decided how to make use of this day we have spread out before us.

Days fall so carelessly behind us as we look forward to holidays, special events, parties and other such times that we believe make the ordinary routine days little more than an ordeal to survive. Those special times dangle before us like the carrot before the trudging donkey. Only too often, though, when we do manage to stretch our necks and grasp one of those times we thought would be so special, it turns out not to be what we’d hoped.

We hope for some kind of transcendental period, a time that crystallises our lives into something solid, something real that we can grasp in our eager hands, hold up to the light and see the myriad reflections of all our possibilities shine and glow.

All too often though, it doesn’t happen like that. We arrive at these longed for days to find they are as tired and grey as we are. We feel like our donkey has discovered that the carrot, it strained so hard for, is old, dry, wrinkled and mouldy.

Then we look behind us, at the trail of all those days we wasted waiting for this now that seems so empty of all we’d hoped for. There will be no crystallising moment, no period of revelation, no great insight.

But we are wrong. There is insight, there is understanding, and it lies there in that moment where we turn and see that trail of wasted days we so carelessly tossed aside. It is then we realise.