The Blacksmith
Have you ever had these thoughts?
I have to wake up. I have to shower. I have to eat. I have to workout. Do I work today? Are there errands to be run? Are there events on the calendar I’m missing? What thing have I been procrastinating which can no longer put off? Do I have enough time for *insert hobby*? If so, how much time do I have? Well, I’ll *hobby* for an hour. Then workout. Then it’s time for work. Then…
Can we just stop? Pause the whole thing.
In those moments where I want the world to pause long enough for me to take a breath, I find myself freezing. Staring at the clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. And now I feel less like a person, and more like a cog in a relentless machine, shunted forward ceaselessly by the baleful drone of a blacksmith. With each “Tick” of the clock, his hammer strikes, wearing thin the time left for the day. It never ceases. Never relents. Sometimes I feel as though I am the one beneath the hammer. A metal being worn thinner and thinner with each passing day.
What do we say, then, to this blacksmith? What do we say to the obligations beset upon us, both by ourselves, and by others?
I’d like to sit upon a grassy knoll in the mountains. Awakened not by blaring alarm, fraught by the demands of the day. But by the whisperings of the earth beneath me. The gradual chorus of animals, rising from their slumber. The slow oncoming of day, brought on by the sun. I want the world to wake up with me. Be part of it. Close my eyes and breathe. Have the scent of pine fill my lungs, hear the pitter-patters of animals racing through a meadow. There, the toll of the blacksmith falls mute. Silenced for a time. Hushed by the sacred beauty of the world inhaling and exhaling.
But the blacksmith will continue to beat his ceaseless rhythm. He is employed by father time to serve as a reminder. There are things we cherish. Things to accomplish. People to work with and hug and love and remember. Worlds within ourselves, both beautiful and terrible, full of light and dark. Worlds we must explore, where we prune away the diseased bits and nurture those seeds awakening beneath the surface. We put to death those things within us screaming lies and deceit, and try harder and harder to find the voice whispering about the good sleeping within.
The blacksmith strikes, hammer meeting the steel of our hearts. Not to punish. But to draw out that which rests beneath the surface.
