On knees and elbows, I ducked under the kitchen island and scrubbed at the solidified bits of bright green jello on the floor, the remnants of my daughter’s treat, requested more for its scientific properties than its culinary ones. Hadn’t she made the concoction just the day before? How could it so quickly have become part of the floor? My conscience was clouded: I had a pressing deadline to attend to. It wasn’t the first ‘nerd-sniping’ I’d fallen prey to that day. The stubborn contours of what for all intents and purposes resembled a miniature mountain range were nearly impervious to my best attempts to level them, but I continued furiously scrubbing at the anomaly until satisfied it was all but undetectable.
While there was clearly some satisfaction at seeing the restored floor, I dared to ponder how many opportunities I’d missed trying to satisfy some need for order outside the bounds of my more acute need for creative time to leverage the power of dreams into realities, beyond the verbal machinations that don’t manifest as easily as the thoughts and inclinations which fuel them. The fact that the color of this tiny stubborn mountain range resembled cryptonite reminded me that we have our ‘favorite’ forms of procrastination which are nothing less than stumbling blocks we allow in our own path, which we at times subconsciously pursue like a heat-seeking missile, looking to be diverted from our path which could lead to some scary unknowns. After all, it’s much safer and ever-so-mildly rewarding to scrub at tough bits of floor gunk and see them sanded away than face our fear of failing at what we most want to achieve. What momentary successes are we trading like Esau’s pot of lentils for the inheritance we were meant to own, even if through our own stumbling process deeper into its mystery?