Next best thing

Let the Dishes wait

Do you remember that Natalie Cole song?… it went:

 let the dishes wait no need for dusting no reason to clean the dirty floor …Cause I am sure it doesn’t matter now that he’s gone away. I’ve got no plans for the future   Cause he’s not here with me.

Lyrics like those filled my ears growing up~ I would lay on the floor and dream about a time when I would feel that kind of love slit your wrist kind of love and how we would fight and make up.  I still do love the ballads but now really find the message must be better crafted properly to lend my ear to it.

During a more contemporary era Toni Braxton crooned that she would never breathe again and so many others paint a picture of how immobilizing the world can feel without your man. And do not get me wrong I know it all too well waiting for him to call, wondering what he is doing, noticing him noticing someone else... it’s all very difficult terrain to navigate so sad love songs often punctuate and highlight a feeling of weakness and hopelessness which is just downright false. Around that time, (Toni Braxton's breathing) I was taking an acting class and a teacher asked about the action of a particular scene: She asked when it all goes to hell and he’s left and the baby is crying and he’s left and cat shitted on the floor and he left and the pot roast burned and he left…what is the action for that woman, what does that woman do? I sat there& let it dawn on me like a radical cosmic light. She does the next best thing like:  takes the garbage out, folds the laundry and if she does let the dishes wait they will not wait for long, cause she’s got to get her lawyer on the phone and take care of the next best thing.

I say all this to say be careful what messages you let in to your mind. Let them make you motivated & make you know your own worth and the beauty of your friendship. The messages should enhance who you are~ not cripple and stop you No way! If you feel like you cannot get up out of bed and that things are just too overwhelming well I say: Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring… you know the rest of those words right !!! if you don't research the Black National Anthem. Those freedom songs reverberate in our souls and are there for all of us to tap into in times when the world seems so heavy.

So it’s going to hurt a little and it’s going to require some restructuring to your life but: step by step, with the hand of God holding yours, you can do the next best thing! I love you and hope things get better. I have definitely been there and lived to breathe again !