The Gist of The Matter

We may not have met in person. We may not have shook hands – and if we ever do, I like a good firm, handshake. If we haven’t high-five'd, I like them just like that. High. No low fives and definitely no you’re-too-slow-fives that the youths of America jokingly initiate. 

However, we have met here before. Therefore, I think it’s a safe platform that I can bypass the weather and go straight into a heart-to-heart (or fist-bump to fist-bump if you prefer) discussion and delve into a not-so-secret secret. Ready?

I like to paint. I like to create beautiful imagery. Sometimes I use pens. Sometimes I use pencils. But in circumstances such as this, I depend on a keyboard and upon the connectivity between two screens.

You see, I like to paint pictures for people where the medium is words, not acrylics or watercolors.

But after pouring my attention, my spine and sometimes my water over the keyboard to develop every detail into bringing to life the pepperonis of a pizza shop, restoring the chipped paint of a dilapidated warehouse, or helping fill the cavity of a toddler’s on his first visit to the dentist, I need a break.

I need to lift my head slowly (so as to avoid whiplash), and for all those in with any physiological background, I do indeed crack my knuckles at this juncture.

When I come up to breathe from this self-induced, word-constricting comma, when I look up from my own Wonderland, I acknowledge April’s thunderstorms and the thunderclouds. I see the leafless trees, the muddy walkways, and I see the soggy grounds. Also, all of this has a major impact on my soles; the soles of my shoes. Subsequently this impacts my wallet.

Because I am a realist.

Here’s the gist of the matter:

Suppose I shove away from my desk on my wheeled chair when work ends and head out on a gray, stormy day.

Then, like an incompetent baker who can’t crack eggs, the clouds break open and the water sloshes on me. And what appears to be only me. Even though this isn’t really true. I am wet, but onward I walk.

Ahead a gentleman is getting in his car, shaking out his umbrella as he begins to collapse it and back into his sedan. (How does the general population accomplish that feat so elegantly? So inconspicuously?)

As I approach closer, he calls out, “Hey, I don’t need this anymore! I’m obviously heading out. You can have this-”

“Oh thanks, but I couldn’t. Are you sur-”

“…for 20 bucks. Even.”

“Oh, um, I only have $15 on me.”

“I’ll take it.”

Sold.

And that my friends is the gist of the matter.

• As a realist, I acknowledge that this person is taking advantage of an opportune moment. It’s very economically advantageous of him.

• An optimist individual might give him the benefit of the doubt thinking this person is attempting to make some much-needed money for his family, even pulling out the emergency $50 from his or her wallet.

• A pessimist doesn’t buy the umbrella because he or she assumes it doesn’t work. Actually, a pessimist may never have left the office because, “Chicken Little: The sky is falling!”

The gist of the matter is we’re going to encounter rainy days. (Quite literally, now that it is April!) The clouds will crack open from above us. There will be puddles. So eventually we will have to go through them.

It’s how we go through them that matters most.

The gist of the matter is we’re going to get muddy. It’s a fact. But even mud is good for our skin, right?