Follow You Heart

"I think that you should have T-shirts made with Goddess on them. They would sell."

I was having dinner with my friend Terry. It had been too many months since we had seen one another and were catching up. When the conversation turned to my blog, he started with Goddess.

"It could have her picture on it and underneath could say 'Love Really Is A Bitch!'"

I cracked up but he kept going. It seems that Goddess is developing a cult following. There are evidently many people who read what I write every day not so much because they give a damn what's going on in my life but because they are huge fans of Goddess. I have become a minor character in my own life!

And it's true! I make my way around town and people ask, "How's Goddess?" They never ask how I'm doing.

When I'm walking her on the island, passing cars will roll their windows down and yell, "Hello Goddess!" without ever looking at me.

Who knew these people are part of a cult?

Now I love the Goddess and she is one of the cards that my life has been dealt and I am grateful for that. Each of our lives have been dealt a stack of cards. Some of the cards we cannot change. Our race. Our gender. Our families. Where we are born. How we were raised. We hold onto these cards throughout our lives.

Other cards we pick up or we discard. Our jobs. Our lovers. Where we choose to live. Who our friends are. These are cards that we choose to keep if we think that they are worth it or we throw them away because they don't prove to be all that useful in our game of life.

The stack of discarded cards grows and some may end up being useful again. An old friend shows back up. Someone who made you a promise years ago delivers when you call it in. You return to some place that you loved and it still holds all of the alure and magic that it did the first time.

The trick about playing the cards in your life is that you always have to follow your heart. It guides you in what you hold onto and what you throw away. The game of life is all about having the fullest heart at the end.

I thought these things last night. Terry is a card that I hold onto. Goddess is for sure! And where I live and what I do and who I love.

Then the bill came and Terry made me pull out a dollar bill so that we could play poker to see who would pay for dinner. He called out numbers printed on the face of the dollar and I called out numbers. He won and I had to pay. Dammit.

I would have won had we been playing with cards.

Or if Goddess would have been with me.