Cockatiel
Sitting at my desk for inspiration to write this weekly piece, I’d hit a wall. That’s rare since I usually have draft outlines in advance, without sitting contemplating for ages. Ordinary life-things often provide a spark but nothing that floated my boat would come to mind. Sitting lost hazily in thought, I was jolted back to earth conscious that a faint ‘tap,tap,tap,’ sensation going on near my left leg had escalated to become intolerably distracting.
Murray Smith
The ordinary event occurring under my nose – more literally under my desk, was our cockatiel in full ‘destructazoid’ mode. Sliding the roller chair back, I discovered that this precocious pet who had been having free-range ‘house time’ was perched on my leg busily pecking along moulded edging of the antique mahogany desk! Her shredding beak had covered the floor in wood splinters and there were more tell-tale slivers all over my trouser leg.
That promptly ended bird’s out-of cage excursion. The desk is a bit of a family heirloom.
I began contemplating repair job measures and costs… would it need restoration or could I just pass the look off as a ‘shabby chic’ piece of furniture? It’s avant-garde to re-purpose furniture with pleasingly old and slightly worn appearances. I’ve admired many nicely done items that have been given ‘signs’ of age with wear and tear, or ‘distressed’ finishes to create a look that reflects old-world furniture, without necessarily being genuine period stuff.
Yellow cockatiel. Photo: Werlley Meira, pexels.com
A phone call from an older friend disheartened by confronting personal issues interrupted my musings. The talk with him got me thinking about how for so many people, young and old alike, life reaches points where like my desk, it needs a refresh. Maybe they haven’t necessarily been ‘pecked’ away at, but too many become jaded with circumstances and begin reflecting the signs of age and wear or tear, without necessarily even accumulating an abundance of years. With furniture, a bit of dinging-up and damage to provide the distressed look is acceptable, but it does nothing for us flesh and blood humans.
If your life is currently in need of a bit of a fix up, a re-purposing upgrade, or maybe a more thorough overhaul, I certainly don’t want to trivialise your difficulties or the pain that might be accompanying your present circumstances, but can I offer two things that have lifted my faith and courage in tough times?
Firstly identify and engage in healthy activity that ‘replenishes’ you. Life can be full of depletion at many levels and it’s common to ‘run dry’. Imagine a car deploying all its accessories while the motor is not running – the battery flattens rapidly without a generator or alternator replenishing it. You can’t continue on ‘empty’.
Secondly ‘be thankful.’ If that sounds annoyingly glib, pause to reflect on things you have in life to be grateful for. Redirecting focus on what we do have, rather than what we don’t have, changes our outlook – like the guy complaining he had no shoes – until he saw someone without feet. An old poem goes, “Two men looked out from prison bars; one saw mud, the other saw stars”.
May God lift our vision enabling us to see with gratitude.
