Music Monday: Trains

I have been sick. Actually L and I both.

Increasingly my metaphor for the dynamics of life is a train. A train that does not stop. Maybe it slows to a crawl, but once on the train, it is hard to get off, switching cars is an option, but the train of life stops for no one and yet it can also pass you by.

When I am sick I am often very much aware how much of a run away train life can be. I was trying to keep up and frankly it is a losing battle last week. I am forcing myself to just relax about all the loose ends around me and just focus on getting back in tip top shape.

Then if we think about everyone being on their own trains, the metaphor becomes a pre-algebra problem. If train A is traveling 50 miles per hour and train B is traveling 48 miles per hour and they are 10 miles apart, at what time will they collide.

You get the idea.

I think as a writer we often like to think that our stories are taking place in isolation, writing is an isolated pass time. We huddle up with our pens and paper and go-go, but alone, solitary.

Life is not like that, it is like a roundhouse, with trains going off in all directions, the switching yard allowing trains to transfer tracks. Sometimes we join up with other trains, adding cars to the line and sometimes we let cars go, leaving them in the round house or a station.

I am not a linear thinker, not by a long shot, but life, time has a linear progression, just like that of a train. Time goes forward, there is no going back.

What I am really working towards is you are on the train, unless you plan to jump off, you have to make the best of a cars you have, certainly work towards new cars if that makes you happy, but I think the wise money is on accepting that the train is going forward with you on it, if there are trials in live, the only way out is through. No sense in considering the non-possible solutions.

So if the train is heading to Marrakesh and you don't want to go, you better be prepared to join someone else's train, hope a switching yard is up ahead, or be prepared to give Marrakesh a chance. Some train rides are long and dusty and sometimes you get stuck with a gaggle of geese or children.

I don't suggest you jump off the moving train. My money is on learning to be your own engineer and then being prepared to tough out the tough patches most of all invest time in learning to enjoy the ride.