It was a beautiful day today. Jared Schickling

It was a beautiful day today.  The sky was blue, the air warm and the sun bright. 

Driving home from yet another crappy workday, I stopped at a traffic light.

As I waited for the light to change and was tired of watching cars

rush around in a hurried chance of getting somewhere they needed to be,

I glanced up at the bright blue sky of my vast sunroof.

I starred at the wispy white clouds that looked like cotton strung across a background.

Sitting at the intersection starring at the sky seemed like an eternity.

And I didn’t want it to end.

It was inviting and comforting.  It was like the beauty of the universe smiling at me.

Just before the light turned green and my euphoria ended I tilted the head back.

Even further and the gaze caught the sky further behind me.

As I did I noticed something.

The building where I work sits in an area that is notorious for geese.

For some strange reason they hang out there all year long.

While most birds fly south for the winter, these geese lazily stay in the same place throughout

the seasons.  They make nests in our window wells and planters.

They lay in the middle of roads and sidewalks.

They complain to passers by.

And they sit on top of cars parked in the parking lot as if they were placed there

in your living room.  And with geese comes the poop.  I was enjoying the beautiful

view of nature’s glory

and there in the way was a slathering of it

between me and my view of the sky.

The light changed and the tragic started to move again as I drove away

and had a thought.  That poop daringly clinging to the slick glass of my sunroof

was like the negative thoughts that tend to plague me

and ruin the view of my life.

“Don’t let getting shit on ruin your view on things”, I thought.  I decided

that the negative, defeating, and draining thoughts that tend to come into me

were like this.

The beauty of the sky hadn’t changed.  Getting shit on has just gotten in the way of

me seeing it.  The beauty of life never changes either.  It’s just the shit on the brain

gets in the way of me seeing it.

So when it hits, I know that it is just shit in my eye and once I remove it,

the view will be excellent.