SKELETAL

What holds people up, makes them stand vertical? There’s simple answers and complex ones. There are God-fearin’ folk who would say, “God is the skeleton that supports the human frame.” But if I’m asked a similar question, I’d assume the asker wanted a more specific articulation. So I’d offer, for starters that people prop themselves up by one of two things. Either they take joy and affirmation in the feeling that, “I can produce.” Or  they affix themselves to causes bigger than themselves that can be but aren’t always spiritual. There is something that motivates people to make their own lives count and the efforts toward that objective quickly become skeletal.

As with the human skeleton, and I know little about bones, I imagine our pride is regularly subject to bruising and breaking. Bones and egos are brittle due to deficiencies and when weak skeletons are exposed, the result can be toxic as people attack one another.

Pure ignorance cripples us all at times as we judge, complain and pout because we can’t have what we want. It’s a brittle bones disease beyond compare. In fact I once met a young man with the physical version of this disease and he was quite cantankerous, throwin’ attitude and nearly runnin people down with his wheelchair. Wouldn’t you protect your Achille’s heal?

And so the word skeletal has more to do with the depth of the strength you exude than the remains you leave behind. The operative word is depth. We can choose to fortify our emotional and spiritual core, unlike our genetic skeletons. The irony is how we leave that to chance and blame the world for our failures. Make the skeletal work of you a beauty.