...beggars can't be choosers...

It is in melancholy times that I find myself wallowing in my state. In between the hustles of my everyday life that I take small breaths and ponder on what I am, what I had led myself into, and what I might expect at the next turn. My life’s roller coaster is in its downswing at the moment, but only half of the car has turned downward, the rest is in an anticipating stage of curve. I am seated in the first seat and I can see the deep plunge ahead. I am sporting a scream that can’t seem to find its sound yet. The anticipation of falling while seeing to where one is falling to.

My professional life is at a crossroad, one that doesn’t have any direction marks at the corners, neither are there any crossing guards to ask directions from. It is in the middle of a vast land called nowhere. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but a close approximation though. Several weeks from now, I will know where this crossroad would have led me, and whether my decision, if ever and when I finally make one, was leaning towards the better or the worse. I hate this feeling, of not knowing what will happen, or how it will happen, or worse, when. It is like I am being held hostage, or that seven days of waiting for the next episode of my favorite weekly television show.

And yet, on the one hand, I cannot complain. The situation is out of my control, and I am but a simple leaf floating in the gutter after a rain. I am a beggar who doesn’t have the luxury of a choice. This fact, however, instead of consoling, makes everything – the whole situation - all the more exhilarating and agonizing. Now that’s another exaggeration.

On the other hand, I do have a little choice. Even though I cannot choose the scraps that fall off someone else’s table to help me last the day, I can in fact choose which table to wait under. I can choose to stay under this table now, where I am fully aware of the kind of stuff that falls, and be content with its occasional sallowness. Or, I can find shelter under a different table, one where the shoes of those dining are as shiny as my bathroom mirror. There I can surely expect better scrap to fall from the table. Healthy, tasty and more luxurious.

Beggars can’t be choosers, but they definitely can choose where to beg.

In time, this sentimental embellishment might come to pass, or it might not. Still that decision has to be made. And I must weather this lonesome state I am in, until finally somebody tells me the storm has passed. But right now, I must hold tightly on to the rail handles, hold my breath deep, and ready myself for the eventual fall ahead.

This roller coaster is moving.