Emergency Kit

 "Emergency Kit"

David Lee Finkle

People who survived the sinking ship

Long enough to get on a lifeboat

Are sometimes found dead on that lifeboat. 

To be dead in a lifeboat 

Means to be dead 

In the place that should have saved your life. 

Water, rations, rescue flairs,

All sit within arms’ reach

Unused

By arms that didn’t reach

Across the small distance,

Take them up. 

Use them. 

Live.

I am that non-survivor sometimes. 

I sit, dead inside,

With all the supplies I need to live 

Sitting at arms reach. 

But these supplies are 

Thoughts

Ideas 

Wisdom

That if I only took them out 

And used them

Would bring me back to life. 

The first supply: perspective.

It doesn’t sound comforting

But knowing that the world 

Has always been a wretched place 

Puts things in perspective a bit. 

None of this is new. 

If I think back on those in the past

Dealing with the world then

It is the ones who 

Either quietly or boldly 

Went about changing the world for the better

Who count.

Some never lived to see their designated 

Promised Land,

Even if they went to the mountain. 

What matters is that they kept walking 

Towards the Promised Land. 

Second supply: Wisdom.

I help create the world. 

All I can do is change

My little corner

And hope those changes ripple outward

For the good.

The key to the good life

Isn’t having good things happen to you

But making good things happen.

We have a wealth of knowledge

From all the faiths of the world

And Philosophies throughout time

From science and art and all realms of thought

To sift and to reflect and determine what is

The Good. 

Third supply: Choice.

Between what happens 

And what I do

I always have a choice

Not about how I feel 

But about what I do.

I always have a choice. 

Some say choice is an illusion. 

If so, it’s a convincing one.

Perhaps believing you have choice -

Like some kind of real magical thinking - 

Makes it so.

I have my attention. 

I’ve read that your life 

Consists of what you pay attention to. 

I can change what I am paying attention to

Sometimes to escape what is happening

And sometimes to look at it through a new lens. 

My emergency kit has many lenses 

That I can wear over my mind

To bring out different aspects 

Of the world around me.

People who see the world 

Through just One Lens 

Are what create most of the problems

In the first place.  

I have thoughts. 

I have the ability to think. 

To be skeptical 

Not just about the Other

But about my own certainties 

My own prejudices 

My own knee-jerk reactions

My self-righteous anger. 

I have in my Emergency Kit

As well invisible threads 

Binding me to all those whose 

Lives have drifted close to mine. 

Sometimes they guide me across turbulent seas.

Sometimes I guided them. 

Sometimes we collided. 

But these threads remind me 

That I am not alone. 

We 

Are not alone. 

And so as I feel the darkness threatening 

To sink me

I open my kit and shoot up a flair

To see if there is anyone else 

Out there

With an emergency kit of their own 

We could share.