A Walk

The boy skirted the majestic lake thinking of her as he so often did.

He followed the dirt path that rose as high as twenty feet before dipping to the water’s edge only to climb again.

He walked aimlessly, content to have a direction laid out before him.

“To love her, I must embrace her fully,” he pondered. “Her joys, her sorrows, her happiness, her suffering—all of it.”

He stepped over a rock in the trail.

“The joys and happiness are easy,” he told himself. “What about the sorrows and suffering?”

He glanced from the dirt to the green grass beside it to the still water, scanning without noticing much at all.

“Do I try to put myself in her shoes, see the world through her eyes? Can I navigate that much history without getting lost? Can’t I understand her pain through my own? Is that enough?”

He heaped question upon question, a jumbled pile of rhetoric that begged the ultimate query.

A flock of Canadian geese swooped down from above the trees and in perfect unison, flared before gliding on to the glass surface where they settled causing tiny ripples to flow outward in concentric circles.

“They seem to embrace the air with such little effort,” he reflected. “Now, how do I embrace her?”

He meandered along with his yearning as his only company.

The strong smell of honeysuckle interrupted his muse and he stopped to draw it in.

He smiled at the sweet scent, a gentle reminder of all things good—wild, free, a gift from the bounty of nature.

It brought him happy images of her, her radiant cheeks that broke into a wide laugh and caused his heart to skip, a warm glow in the aftermath that lingered like the bees hovering above the vines.

“I can do this,” he urged inwardly. “I can pry open this tortured soul.”

The sun cast a light warm blanket over the morning.

Unconsciously, he raised his head, paused and let his eyelids flutter closed.

He stood at rest and basked for a full minute, his mind quiet for the first time.

“Maybe I try too hard.” 

He resumed his march.

“Maybe I need to let it flow.”

He frowned for a beat.

“What does that mean, anyway?”

Another question.

“To see or not to see, to be or not to be…” 

He rambled on.

“I could drive myself crazy,” he mumbled.

“Maybe that’s what it will take,” he continued.

“I can do this,” he reminded himself again.

A cloud split the lake in half, cast a dark shadow in sharp contrast to the shimmering sunlit side, a yin and yang of massive proportions.

The boy took it in and felt a calm ease into him.

“I shall simply love her,” he promised. “And in that love, I shall find the embrace.”

He turned around and began the journey home.

That’s A View From The Ridge…

Best-selling author, Ridgely Goldsborough has written 19 books to date, 5 on emotional intelligence and has developed a phenomenal program called CustomerConversionFormula.com that you can get absolutely free as a member of the Groove community.