Sometimes I get too sentimental.  Like a parent reading an old hand-drawn birthday card from a grown child.  And it's always at a those horribly predictable times. And what makes it worse is most of the time I can't place the root of the sentimentality.  Like when you can't quite remember the name of a song that is almost playing in your head.  Right there.  Ephemeral but about to take form.  It just never does.

It's funny, but I like the feeling in an indescribable way.  Maybe the same reason we like a sad love song or a tragic movie.  Stirring up a pain you didn't earn and therefore can walk away from.  Times like these I start to wonder if everyone shares these thoughts.  Has these commonalities that are more than just constructs of a life randomly pieced together by our individual upbringing.  The way a salmon knows to return to the small mountain stream it was born into.  The way a sea-turtle breaks the prison of its egg and struggles into the turmoil of the ocean's waves.

Walking across the hot coals of life makes us who we are.  Sure, it hurts.  And it can hurt like hell.  But it hurts in that strange good way.  And through this pain, you realize your joys become even greater.  My life, by comparison, has been cake.  Sure,  I have walked through my own personal hells, but it has never been anything that I could not take with grace.  Well, maybe not grace, but at least some civility.  And here I stand today.  One day closer to death.  But one day further into a life well celebrated and with many more adventures to come.

Like  I said; sentimental.