THE INVITATION

One story. Five blogs. Infinite paths. Your choice.

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It’s Saturday morning, and your mum’s telling you to take your little sister to the park. “Unless you want to help me mop the floor,” she adds. You get it – the park wins.

With your skateboard tucked under your arm, and your sister trailing behind on her rollerblades, you head out the door and down the footpath. “I’ll work on my grind while Carly practices her backwards skate,” you think, “and we’ll head home in time for lunch and computer games.”

Then an envelope catches your eye. It’s lying beside some bushes, half-covered with leaves, but it looks intact and rather official. You pick it up as Carly skates to a halt behind you. “What’s that letter?” she says. The front reads:

To The Finder

Tulledon Lane

Hatbottom

“It’s for you, then,” says Carly. “This is Tulledon Lane, Hatbottom, and you’re definitely The Finder. Go on – open it!”

There’s no arguing with that logic, so you slit the envelope open and pull out the letter inside. It reads:

“Thankyou for accepting our invitation. Please be advised that our driver will pick you up promptly at 2pm, Saturday, on the corner of Tulledon Lane and Thack Street. You are to bring one guest, four ping-pong balls, and a packet of paper clips.”

Carly looks at you. “What’s this about accepting an invitation?”

“I don’t know,” you say, truthfully. “I don’t remember accepting anything.”

“Well that’s pretty strange,” she says. “What are you going to do?”

If you prepare as advised for a 2 p.m. pickup, click here.

If you scrunch up the invitation and throw it away, click here.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

I don’t have too much to say here–I just want to share a piece of art that really moved me when I saw it last night. This was posted by a friend I knew in what seems like another lifetime, high school. I know him as Sam Trave.

When he posted this, he said, “But it’s not mine. It belongs to the world now.” So, I thought I would share it with, at least, some of the world.

“In the Middle of the Night” Art by Sam Trave, SJT. It’s a love story.

HOPE.

I wish I could say this is a story that begins in the setting of your dreams, with a drink on your right and the weightlessness of carefree on your left. But it’s not. I wish I could tell you you’re reading a love story–the kind of thing Walt Disney would vomit into animation–but I can’t. Instead, this is a realistic story based on truth, and unfortunately, the truth is ugly. Except, in this world when you find the truth, it’s a beautiful thing no matter how ugly it is.

It’s like when you lose your wallet, but someone returns it. You realize that maybe you don’t need to lose all hope, until you open it and remember you never had any to begin with.

{photo credit to Courtney McGough}

ONE HUMAN LIFE.

One human life, your entire existence, seems comparable to one leaf on a single branch somewhere in the vast forests of Earth; it’s unlikely that any other leaf not hanging from your growing tree will ever even know you exist. Regardless, always remember you can endure the storms and blow peacefully in the sun with the company of those around you, or you can choose to fall from the tree and disintegrate aimlessly on the ground. And every once in a while, someone higher than you might come by, pick a leaf off its branch, and mold it into a stepping stone to somewhere. If willing, it may be your leaf.