Picture your life
as a whiteboard
on which is written
all you've been told
about life and meaning–
    all you should believe,
    all you should do,
    all you should be.

Thus crammed with
a lifetime of scribbling,
the board is unreadable,
a jumble of words running together, overlapping
    fighting with each other,
an unintelligible collision of sentences
    fragmenting, jumping, merging…

Before it
you feel crushed, immobilized.

Pick up the eraser
(have courage)
and slowly wipe the surface
clean.

Stand back.
Observe your life emptied of its chaotic legacy.

Now,
with intention,
trade the eraser for a marker.
What one word (perhaps two) will you write
on the whiteboard of your life?

Or perhaps no word at all?

The board is yours.

Text and image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.