Simon on Counting Up From Zero,
“I’ve never met a person yet (myself included) who hasn’t struggled with some aspect of their lives at some point. Be it ambition or lifestyle, but if it is the former, we can find ourselves at a loss about what to do next. The truth is that we can’t do it on our own, and it can take a lot of counting to where we want to be.
Counting Up From Zero may help.”
You may as well be lying on your back, staring up at the sky as the cold rain hits your face. It isn’t a refreshing rain. In fact, the drops may as well be made of bricks. That is how it feels. Cold, hard, cruel. Zero.
You have failed yet again, probably for the hundredth, no, the thousandth time just in this life alone. God forbid there was a life before and there will be one after this eternity of misery. Nobody wants another fresh hell.
To drown out the sound of those laughing at your misery you start to count, but dammit if you cannot get past that zero. And that makes it worse. In this life of ups and downs, yours is so mostly definitely down that you can’t even count up to one. Like I say, another fresh hell.
But the hands that hold you down change, and you feel a new pair, ever so gently lift you up. One.
Sitting up instead of lying down is new. You get a new look at life. You don’t have to stare up helplessly as the bricks hurtle their relentless path down toward you. Instead, you get to see what others are doing. The ones that don’t laugh at you. In the meantime, the bricks miss your head and crash worthlessly to the ground.
That same pair of hands that lifted you to sitting, now help you to stand. It’s not that bad. Two.
Then they push you forward, just a little bit. It is enough for now. As you stand in this new place, turning deaf ears to the ones who laugh at your misfortune, your failures and your lacks, you take note of the others. One sings, one writes, and one escapes the arms of the law by replacing bad with good. Yet another stops shouting at others just long enough to see their potential. Then he puts away his anger at them and joins in their quest for whatever it is they search for. You kind of get it. Well, a little bit for now. Three.
The hands give your tired back a well-needed rub. It is nourishment, it is encouraging. The hands provide comfort but instructions. The instructions to move even further forward. You jump a little nervously as a brick crashes behind you, but the hands keep rubbing your back. It’s okay.
All of us can move in numbers, sometimes slowly, something a little too fast for how quickly our count can keep up with but move up and on we can.
We all move in and to the camps we belong to. We move with like-minded people, sometimes it’s an easy find, sometimes we have to seek them out, but they are there.
The hands push a little bit harder and you find yourself in the right place. Your right place.
Four. It’s a place you feel just, well, you feel just okay. But don’t make the mistake it’s an easy place. It can be a cruel and hard place. It can be a place you sometimes want to avoid, but avoidance is no longer an option because you don’t want it to be. Because it’s the right place. Five.
The work needs to be done, the bad banished, the good grateful for. The hands that pushed can become the hands that you hold. There are lots of good numbers ahead, lots of them. The bricks still crash about, but you will learn to dodge them, block, them, bash them away. Counting up from zero. Because counting has to start somewhere
Comments