Time to Wake Up
©2011, Olan L. Smith
"Wake up," Mother says. "Breakfast is ready." As a young child, you wipe the sleep from your eyes with little fists and follow the smell of bacon, ham, and eggs. You pull yourself up in the large kitchen chair and look at the wonderful food that is prepared for you to break the nighttime fasting. So, it is when we hear these words with comfort until we grow older and want to sleep or skip breakfast. For some, it is no longer a delightful summons of love, but it is the annoying alarm clock buzzing in our ears that tells us it is time to get up and get ready for work. We drag ourselves from our bed, stumble around bumping into furniture, and doorways, until we stumble into the bathroom, flip on the glaring light, and look at an ever-aging image of ourselves in the mirror with ruffled hair and bags under our eyes.
We cannot return to sleep for it is time to awaken and proceed with our day. We shave, bathe, or shower. Next, we throw on some clean clothes, fix coffee, gulp it down, grab our car keys, and it's off to the race; the rat race. We want to return to the childhood days of prepared breakfast and not a care in the world, but we cannot, it is work or starve, work or have no shelter; it is work or die. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year; the years become decades, and we look forward to the time of our retirement when our bodies are too old to enjoy the finer things of life. When we walk, pain is in our every move. Our health is sometimes poor and we wear out quickly. We look to the heavens and say, "Lord, you got it backward." We should age backward, retain our wisdom, and retire when we reach twenty-eight years of age, and then stop the reversed aging, so we can enjoy our lives to the fullest. But alas, we have no choice and wonder what it is all about, where we came from, where are we going, and is all there is. If it is, I think this is a poor scenario. The key to living life, enjoying life, and understanding life, are those five words of childhood. "It's time to wake up." Wake up and discover the truth, the knowledge, and the secrets to life, or forever slumber in the illusion called life.
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Olan L. Smith's Short Stories
Short StoryI have, over time, written many short stories,"Short-Shorts" as they are call by some, and by request I am putting them together into one collection for my readers; I will be adding to it as time allows. Love, peace, and freedom. Olan
