The morning was always destined to have heavy cloud across the central Florida skies but that wasn’t going to deter me.
I had slept miserably and after a couple of hours tossing and turning, eventually got out of it a little after three.
There are some mornings where you give it your all; try every trick in the book to regain any semblance of sleep. But when it isn’t working, it isn’t working. And a grown man has to recognize that it’s time to pull on his big-girl panties and call it a night. Why a grown man might have big-girl panties is beyond me but suffice to say that mine felt extra large at that time of the morning.
The cats unanimously gave me a set of what-the-fuck looks as I gave them an early breakfast. I could see them checking their little wrist-watches when the door to the office opened and they were all still caught in a half-sleep state.
By the time I arrived at Ballast Pointe it was still pitch dark and other than a few people who were sleeping in their cars, there was no one else around.
In the distance I spotted a cruise ship returning to port and other than the eventual reddening of the distant clouds, that was the extent of the excitement for the day.
I added a selection at the end of the blog that shows the gradual transition from night to twilight and I hope you enjoy.
At the end of it all I sat back in the car and started the drive home and I began searching my mind for the relevance of anything I might have shot into the surviving thought for a blog.
But honestly, there was nothing.
Typically there is some aspect of the shoot that gives me the enduring thought for the words that follow but this time, none of the images or the situation that I found myself in seemed to matter enough to generate a thought.
And then it hit me. Searching for relevance IS the blog thought!
You see, we go through so much of our life in efforts that make us relevant. Relevant to the people around us, to our family that depends on us, to the world at large even.
The more relevant we feel, the better we feel about ourselves and the impact that our being alive has created.
Famous and infamous people go to extreme lengths to write their relevance such that it leaves a legacy behind them.
But most of us don’t fall into that category and seek relevance within the circle that we move in.
Our feeling of relevance can be deed-driven, or emotionally-driven, and different people find different ways to set their own relevance.
Those that don’t find relevance generally live a worthless life and they become vulnerable to depression and even suicide.
I have lived through periods where I found relevance and then watched it evaporate before my eyes. Because sometimes circumstance can rob us of our relevance and make us feel so small and unimportant. For example when a loved one dies or someone breaks your heart. These can be hugely important events for which we have no say and there is little to comfort us or make us feel relevant when they happen.
I am in a bit of downturn at the moment and it would be easy to feel sorry for myself and moan about how irrelevant I have become. But the truth is, my relevance can be found in the same cats that check their wrist watches when woken early, or the possums and raccoons that nightly find fresh food waiting for them when they are in their nocturnal survival mode.
Our sense of relevance doesn’t have to be written in the pages of history. And in tough times, it doesn’t even have to be anything larger than the smallest creature that we are of assistance to.
It doesn’t matter how small as long as it is external to us. Because even for just that tiniest of creatures, the world is a better place for having us in it.
I guess what I am trying to say is that seeking relevance is an important part of our lives but sometimes, we need to take it where we can find it.
… just a thought.
