Sometimes you can feel...

the overload coming, the piling on of events, people's needs, and the tasks of life, most small in and of themselves but cumulatively back breaking. The weight is manifested as mood, fatigue, and the sense of being overwhelmed. Sometimes your body is stooped by it all but more often your soul is hunched under the duress.

The eyes give it all away, a tired and far away look few are skilled enough to perpetually hide. Walk down the street and look for people in unguarded moments and you will know. Look at yourself in the mirror and you will know as well. There are burdens out there, burdens in there, the weight of the world accumulated in a lifetime of the chase. Every wrinkle, every gray hair, every bit of weariness, they all mark the path most taken in a world that has forgotten heaven.

The unwise, in coming to terms with all of this, see the answer on the horizon, some mystic future when they will have whatever it is they perceive will remove this load or at least the resources to pay someone to handle it for them. In the present they anesthetize to endure, one more drink, one more lover, one more step up at the office.

The wise will understand that there is a call in all of this, a call not to anesthetize themselves in the hope of some future relief but rather to shed the burden itself because so much of it is unnecessary, something we have convinced ourselves into carrying, something we even believe to mark personal success. In the pain of life's burdens is a call to first things, first principles, the essence of what it means to be human.

I'm hearing the call.