The other day, I was thinking about feet as I slipped a pair of socks over mine.
I stared down and wondered about feet and death.
I don’t know how (or why) these disparate thoughts found one another, but I let them dance footloose and fancy-free inside my head.
I thought about feet at the end of a hospital bed — life’s curtain call.
I imagined sensing a final feeling of pins and needles dancing its way across the soles of my feet, mere seconds ahead of a fluttering pulse – the waning pitter-patter prelude to blood pooling and breath ceasing.
I envisioned my feet – blue, bloodless, and stone-like. Toes pointed upward, and heels resting on a cool coroner’s table.
Finally, I imagined the pant cuff of a neatly pressed suit, respectfully pushed up the leg, in a room so full of silence the walls bend outward — a faceless mortician, attentive and methodical, ties my finest dress shoes, tersely knotting them, before carefully evening-out the laces — for whom, I don’t know.
Feet are our passport to purpose.
All of us should stand up, push down, feel the unforgiving world press into the soles of our feet, and revel in the pain as we hike the hills of life.
Feel the crunch of crystalline snow through the soles of your boots, rise above fallen arches, and be thankful for blistered toes and calloused heels.
bendingtheneedle 