What if Life is a Run-On Sentence?

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Learning to Fly Art Journal page – Creativity is the art of letting courage draw you out of fear.

What if life is a run-on sentence? What if to mark the moments you must insert commas and periods and exclamation marks and question marks that give you pause to breathe, to gather your thoughts, to treasure the moment and dance and run about and fall into life’s drift like a river flowing into the sea?

What will your life be made of? A series of words strung together with an occasional comma haphazardly inserted without thought to its significance? Will you throw in a period here and there simply because you’re out of breath and need to catch up to yourself without letting yourself go full tilt into experience every precious moment, wild and free of limiting punctuation?

Or will you festoon your journey with question marks expanding into exclamations dancing upon the lines of every story you live to tell along the way towards that point where the final mark is a joyful celebration of all the highs and lows you’ve captured upon your journey? Will your life end on a period? A sigh of dismay the end has come? Or, an exclamation of bliss you’ve sucked the meaning out of every sentence ever lived?

What if life is a run-on sentence and the only way to mark the passing moments is to insert punctuation where ever you can to give yourself time to breathe, to savour, to capture the scent of every moment, the ebb and flow of every tide, the feel of every drop of rain, the whisper of every breath of wind and leaf falling?

What if life is a run-on sentence telling the story of your life dancing towards the final period that falls into place with grace and ease as you take one last inhale and let it all go.

Would you? Could you? Live it. Over. Out. Full stop. Period.

__________________

This piece is pure ‘fun’. As I walked this morning the thought… “What if life were a run-on sentence?” kept flowing through my mind.

I decided to let it all run out and this is what appeared.

25 thoughts on “What if Life is a Run-On Sentence?”

  1. A never-ending journey would never have closing punctuation or new paragraphs because it goes on and on and on and on until we reach 200 at which time some clever scientist figures out how we can live robust lives to 250 and by then the skin cream manufacturers will be the richest companies in the world because if we can live that long free of disease and decay imagine how many walks we could take and poems we could write until we came to an abrupt full hard stop

    . (period)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

      • Aging is the process by which we lose the capacity to do all the things we never tried in addition to all the ones we did so that we can satisfy the actuarial requirements of those who run our financial system whereby the longer we live and the more we cost to care for the more we need more grandchildren to work and pay taxes to pay for us in our very aged-state. Sadly the decline of cognitive function scares me as much as does erectile dysfunction …

        Getting old is, sadly, a function of getting less relevant – and I’m fighting that.

        Cheers,

        Mark

        p.s. I just came back from my walk in Fish Creek Park – great news: the osprey are back … a pair are building their nest on that massively tall constructed perch (it’s near the Bannister Road – McInnis and Holoway entry to the park) so they’ll be reducing the trout population of the Bow River daily.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. What fantastic questions framed by colors of curiosity. I miss writing with you. You have a beautiful heart, my friend.
    I am drawn to the idea of inserting commas to slow it all down, hear the birds, hear the wind, feel a deep hug of love. I plan on living questions to the end. Questions of the heart.
    Happy Saturday.
    Ali

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Thank you my friend! I too miss writing with you — as I go into full-blown getting ready for an art show in June mode, I find my focus narrowing – and my ability to hold many things in one space more challenged! But… I love the idea of intermittent meet-ups like the writing circles you hold intermittently. For now, that is where I find myself lost in words!
      And yes, questions of the heart are hearty matters!

      Hugs and love beautiful soul.

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      Reply ↓

  3. To breathe to savour. They flow so nicely. In reality though, and I know you’ve been there, one would add “to tread water with waves sloshing your face”. Or “To hurl down the mountain side like a blind snowboarder out of control.” Just my random two sentences worth

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    Reply ↓

  8. Some people don’t get enough of those moments. I have a friend right now walking the blind corridors of hell. It’s so hard to watch and there is so little one can do. I suspect that she can’t even find the memory of a bright spot.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

      • It seems that things just keep stacking up on her. Almost literally. It makes one wonder how much any one person can handle. I wrote the poem “a mighty oak” about her life. I text, call and stop in every few days with a container of soup and some love. Doesn’t seem like much but it’s all I can do. I walk beside her as she needs me to but so much of this journey of hers is alone.

        Liked by 1 person

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