-by El Gitano Peñasco, "The Peñasco Gypsy"
Was that filling or what? Yep, most of us are very well fed (and not just during the Holiday Season) and we all have much to be thankful for. This year, to kick off the season, we headed back to the ‘old-country’ to share the festivities with family and as usual, on T-Day, I failed to push away from the table when I should have!
Which brings me to this week’s thought. Like billions of others on planet Earth, having experienced all that life offers from the worst to the best of times, I can honestly say that regardless of how good or bad things can be the most incredible gift we have all been provided and that we should always be thankful for and dearly embrace is the wonderful and miraculous gift of life itself!
I first discovered life many years ago in an unlikely environment during the ‘Holiday Season’ as a 19-year-old U.S. Army Infantry medic in a far off land. It was there, after surviving my first combat mission and several fire fights and with the carnage laid all about, where in the solitude of my thoughts during the short lived brief moments of a quiet jungle I awoke to a simple truth: “We’re all here for a very short time and we will all be gone for a very long time thereafter!”
Since those days I’ve lived most of my life with that thought guiding me through the maze and sometimes obstacles of living. Not too many years later I also discovered something else that reinforced my notions of life.
And that is, regardless if we believe in Heaven and Hell (or whatever wherever), this precious gift of life, living and being alive in “the vastness of space and the emptiness of time” (as Carl Sagan wrote in his book Cosmos) is to be fully enjoyed with our every breath!
And years later I also concluded that if there is a Hell I’m pretty darn sure that part of the torment accompanying the blistering fires consuming the souls of those of us likely headed ‘South’ will be to endure a mindless, corrupt self-serving politician or ‘talking-head’ before us for all eternity, spewing out their endless rhetoric, stupid, uninformed, ignorant and meaningless opinions, perspectives, lectures, talking-points and speeches!
Hopefully we can all agree that would surely make Hell much worse.
So let’s do our best to avoid that journey and while we are all still here let’s also live life to its fullest. Let us all be kind to all living things. Let us all lend everyone we can a helping hand. Enjoy every sunrise and sunset, every storm, every experience and never forget the one unwavering El Gitano golden rule.
And that is, for those of us fortunate enough to live here in Puerto Peñasco, the recognition and acceptance that the failure to walk along the beach by ourselves or with a loved one or a precious friend at least three times a week and ponder the magnificence of the Universe ---and to do so without a ‘cold one’ (Cerveza) in hand--- is also a mortal sin that will surely result in a one-way trip to the bowels of you know where.
A Gypsy can always dream!
¡Viva Puerto Peñasco y México!
Gypsy
elgitanopenasco@gmail.com
