Lines

"There's two dates in time that they'll carve on your stone, and everyone knows what they mean. But what's more important is the time that is known - that little dash there in between."

There are so many types of lines in this world: life lines on a TV game show, mile-long lines at the mall on Black Friday, and old, worn-thin laugh lines. There are also the lines that you'll find on the page of a novel, arranged in odd patterns and designs to make up words. Journals are filled with these same kinds of lines. Dancers follow lines of the body, and musicians, lines of music. And, of course, there will be lines that create the two dates on your headstone, and the small dash in between.

It doesn't really matter what sort of line it is, a line can change or at least influence our lives in the most unimaginable ways possible. A line on a road that is ignored can change your life drastically. A line that is out of place on an ultrasound can be devastating. Medically speaking, lines can be very bad things. Red lines on a snow-white wrist speak novels for themselves, and seeing those lines can alter a life perhaps more drastically than the person who put them there.

Lines also have the fantastic power to alter a life positively. Comfort and wisdom can be found by the lines in a book. Guidance can be left in a letter. Lines of stitches can seal together wounds that would have otherwise been fatal. Emotion is express in the lines of a wedding vow, and hearts are reached by lines of actors and religious leaders.

Faint outlines are already in place for different aspects of our lives. Our personalities create some of these outlines, and we know what we personally can and cannot do. Dreams and aspirations also give us outlines; they are not always permanent, but they are there when we need them, and slowly fade as other lines grow into place.

I know the course that I want my life to follow, or to use the theme of this post and my blog, I have drawn out the lines that I want my life to follow. For now, these outlines mean freedom, hope, and a reason to keep pushing through whatever it is I am facing. I've watched as people have come and gone in my life, some leaving more lines in my life's book than others, but each person is there regardless of how faint. I've watched as the chapters of people's lives, the ones with me in them, have ended, and they have started writing down the new lines in the next part of their story.

I don't profess to be someone who is going to change the world. I just hope that along the lines of my life, I can be a few lines in someone else's story as well.