My cat is about eighty-four years old. In cat years that is. She's a great cat, she lays around the house, she loves on everyone, eats and is generally to old to raise much of a fuss about anything. She has always been an inside cat, so sometimes when the weather is cool and the house is open to the spring breezes she'll find herself transfixed by the outside world.
She sees the opportunity of an open door before her. She'll sit right at the threshold wagging her tail and you can see the wheels of her mind turning.
"Should I go? It looks fun. What's out there? Scary. I'm going to go, wait no, I'm not..."
She'll sit up, put a timid paw on the ground outside the door stand for a second and withdraw at the slightest sound or movement that is unatural to her. Sitting back on her haunches she looks, longingly, too frightened by her own shadow to venture forth into the wilds of the backyard.
Then, it happened, the day came when she actually stepped outside. Her whole body made it outside for about five minutes. She sniffed and peered and skulked on the patio and I thought for sure she was a gonner. She would take off in her newly found freedom and we would never see her again. I mean all of her dreaming had brought her to this point, right? Her future waiting to be grasped.
Wrong.
As soon as she had walked around outside a while you could see the muscles on her back relax and her tail swish gently back and forth, she was completely uninspired by what she thought was the adventerous. Almost imediately she had a sort of bored expression on her face. Insolent, in a way. Looking at me with those sharp green eyes I could just about hear her in my head.
"Yeah. It's no big deal."
And with that she slowly, nonchalantly walked into the house, jumped up onto the couch and went to sleep. She has not yet ventured again outside.
This got me to thinking about my life and how I do the same things at times. I look and look for things outside of home and hearth for adventure and excitement, half frightened and half raptureous with expectation. Only to find as I venture forth that the world outside is not that amazing. In fact, it can be quite dull. All of the things that I require or desire or dream of can be found easily in my little bubble of a life. A life so full of quality that everything else seems to have lost its color. The grass isn't in fact greener on the other side, because my lawn, truthfully, is pretty damn good. There's a truthfullness and a reality to my life and the relationships I've had in the last several years, that I'm just not finding in the real word. In fact I'm finding a lot of people who lie, and cheat, and steal. People who use and abuse those around them for their own gain. There is selfishness that eats away at people like a cancer. It marrs the outward beauty they so desperately seek after.
I'm glad that I can look at the world through rose colored glasses. I'm glad that I have surrounded myself with people of integrity and character. The bubble of my life can float here and there on the wind, but I will protect it and keep it from bursting. I will carry on those feelings of innocence that I have in my heart. The feelings I get when I wear pink. Wholesome and girly and sweet. I will choose to know the world as a good place, a wholesome place, a pink place. And I will cut away the diseased relationships of my life that darken my vision of peace. Because after all, outside, is really no big deal.
