The Drivel or the Truth

“It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day.” —Richard Ford

This could go a couple different ways depending on which way the wind blows or possibly what you ate for breakfast. The pisser about decisions is usually there are more factors involved than we realize or understand. Take breakfast, for example. Was it bacon and eggs? Oatmeal? Vodka and tonic?

Your answer goes a long way toward shaping the day ahead. Bacon and eggs, you go one way; oatmeal, you go the other. Vodka and tonic, you're not even in the conversation. You're back in bed having strange dreams that may one day come true. Then again, you've been having those dreams all your life, which is why you have vodka and tonic for breakfast.

That implies a causality that may or may not exist. It's easy to blame breakfast choices on dreams, but maybe that's backwards. Not so much chicken vs egg as vodka vs dreams.

The vodka and dreams lead in one direction, away from where the bacon and eggs or oatmeal lead. And it's not like you're locked into those choices permanently once you make them. Sure, some are more challenging to escape after you build up momentum and head down that particular path, but there are peripheral avenues that connect one to the other.

You can always go a different direction. It requires conscious decision, perhaps a measuring of the wind, and probably fewer vodka and tonics.

Lines from a song I wrote many years ago:

Every time you wake

A new chance to define

Every chance you take

Thanks, I'm doing fine

On the one hand, it's drivel. On the other, it contains some truth. Then the question becomes, which came first, the drivel or the truth?