ONE THOUSAND STEPS
This morning I am awakened by city buses. I take my breakfast surrounded by languages I struggle to comprehend. The city is a hard place. You can see it in the faces of the ones that do their best to navigate the long hours, the impossibly steep streets.
My hotel is filled with families on grand adventures. I am on one of my own but of a different kind. Yesterday I met with my doctor. Monday we will go into surgery once again.
But today, in this moment, I am healthier than I’ve ever been. And so, I climb the stairs…and the streets, with curiosity and a faith I cannot define.
I don’t need to wear a bracelet on my wrist to tell me I’ve been on a journey. I am reminded by the delicate stitches in my chest. My device is imbedded in me, like the calm I call on within when everything around me is foreign and seemingly out of place.
The steps I count this morning are paved in marble. Old world and welcoming. This is the kind of place that has taken on the weight of stories we could hardly believe—
My story combines with countless joys and heartaches , swirling like patterns in ancient marble…look closely to see faces of fairies, lovers embracing, profiles of women with hair flowing in the breeze.
We see what is within us. We imagine what we wish to make real. The marble is forever bending and accommodating: The hardness of stone with the softness of a dream.
Yesterday I climbed eight stories in an elevator and walked a long, sterile hallway to an encounter unindulgent to the hopes that reside in me.
With each step, we walk toward what we create in our heads. Even when the journey is unwelcoming, even when it’s not where we imagined we would go.
I have decided that all of what is ahead, is for me. The opposite of hostile. The antonym of against.