Tornadoes and Coffee
Written 30 April 2010
Both took the same amount of time. A rampant tornado blazed through Alabama
Difficult to reconcile those two concepts to me now, but indeed they happened in tandem. Finally I know how ridiculous I am.
In that coffee-bereft moment, little did I know my native people were not pilfering for coffee. No. They were searching for lost loved ones, rambling through the rubble of their homes, their livelihoods, hoping for something, anything, a family picture, a memento, a scrap of life as they knew it a minute ago. Imagine! All this at that same time I was getting angry because we were out of coffee? That was a personal disaster in itself. I do not understand myself or anything else sometimes.
There is nothing simple about that moment in my mind. Like war, earthquakes, tsunamis and cancer and unrest, I must live with that message forever: how quickly an event can change life.
My lack of coffee became so selfish, so mute upon such news of Real Loss that day.
With luck, as I sip my coffee this morning, I have learned to be more grateful. I thought I was sooooo grateful for my peaceful life, and yet there is more to be grateful for, always. With luck, I learned the mere joy of being able to sip coffee, much less to have food to eat, people to love, and a loving home to greet. With luck I will retain a snippet of wisdom from such a tragic event?
Yet the truth remains about how I felt that morning. I am stuck forever with a moment that confirms I am ridiculous. Coffee? My home is in tact. My family is alive and well. Yet by being unaware of what was happening in the world around me I got miffed about absence of coffee. Please forgive me. Simple things bring me pleasure. But Life is not so simple when someone such as I, who craves simplicity, could be so disheartened because I am out of coffee one morning, unaware.
--PPM
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