I washed my “leavings” down the drain this morning and thought about something for the first time.

Actually, I think about things all the time….so I misspoke if I say that it was the first time that I thought about something.

I think about things quite often.

By “leavings”, I mean what ever it’s called that’s left in the sink after I shave a days worth of whiskers off.

Maybe “ex-whiskers” or “potentiabeard” would be more accurate descriptions?

I think I’ll call it “potentiabeard”. That sounds pretty cool. I like that new word.

Anyway, I shaved and then rinsed all these little black stubby, stubby hairs down the drain…all that “potentiabeard” that a day produced…and I thought, “I wonder how many potential “full vikings” I’ve washed down all the different drains I’ve known in my life?”

That’s kind of a funny thought…nothing to obsess over or anything…I don’t need to do a “drain genealogy” ….but it’s a funny thought to think about the beards that could have been.

I’m not going to retrace my steps in detail just so I can catalog something that I might see as a loss now, though.

If I didn’t make these tiny hairs go down the sink on a consistent basis, I would not be a very popular person at my house.  It’s kind of gross to have a bunch of whiskers in the sink. I couldn’t get away with keeping my memories around very long.

I couldn’t get away with that.

That beard was on a ship that sailed. It’s gone.

Sometimes, I obsess over things that I’ve lost like any of it matters.

Like it matters.

Now, the people I’ve lost mattered. To lose a loved one is a tragedy that never really stops being a tragedy. That will always matter.

But sometimes I misplace a brick…a single brick…and then moan about the house that could have been.

I trouble myself over some mysteriously “better” circumstance that eluded me…some twist in the road that might have brought me to a different conclusion.

“Might have been” can be sort of seductive. “Could have been” pulls you into it’s orbit with minimal gravitational suck.

Now, I’m in a good place…I couldn’t design something better if someone said, “here…anything you want…ANYTHING!!! How’s that sound? Right…anything. Anything you want…any life, any people around you…name it, it’s yours…all you have to do is look around and decide.”

I wouldn’t change my life.

Wow…that’s a good early morning revelation….. “I like my life”.

That’s goooooooood. That’s a good thing.

And I really don’t miss my “potentiabeard” to the point of incapacitation.

Smooth or hairy, it’s “all good”.

I did ponder that swirling hairy water for a moment this morning and think about what might have been if I’d just left it alone and let it do what “potentiabeards” do.

If I’d just let it grow, I’d have a beard by the end of the month.

But smooth is good.

It’s crazy to miss something that never was.

Be here now.

That’s not a picture of me.