They couldn’t understand it and they could…They had their food and water right there, but what was that open space? – Charles Bukowski, Post Office
Charles Bukowski (1920-94) was an American poet and writer. We discovered Bukowski at the Huntington Library near Los Angeles in 2011, where a manuscript of his book Ham on Rye was displayed near a volume of the Gutenberg Bible. We were so moved by the page we were able to read – a kid based on Bukowski is about to get beaten by his father for the first time – that we went and bought the book that day…It remains one of our all-time favorites.
Today’s Thought comes from a time in Post Office where Bukowski’s character, Henry Chinaski, works graveyards at the post office and is trying to sleep one day while his girlfriend is at work. Her birds, however, won’t stop chirping and Chinaski takes the birdcage into the backyard and opens the door to see if the buggers wouldn’t mind flying away.
They couldn’t understand it and they could…They had their food and water right there…
The birds waddle to the edge of the door and consider the matter, looking at their food and water and then the open space outside the cage. This is exactly what us humans do. There comes a time in our lives when we must decide whether we are going to follow our hearts and trust our instincts or whether we are going to ignore them. It’s really the only decisions us humans have to make: our hearts will tell us where to go and our instincts will tell us how to get there.
…but what was that open space?
Despite the prospect of the unknown, we must leave our figurative cages and explore our open spaces. This takes wisdom to know where to explore, courage to go and do it and patience to see it through to the end. The reward is a life spent on our path, a life where we made our time serve us instead of merely marking time.
The Thought for the Day runs regularly. Gaylon began stockpiling quotes in 1988.
