Around the Corner

“Some things look better, baby, just passing through.” Elton John

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I never thought much about what’s around the corner, although my mother used that phrase often. I think it was on my first visit to France years ago that it began to make sense.

If you’ve been to France you know. In every small village there’s a photo op around most corners. Maybe it’s a garden gate, or an ancient rock wall with white or red bougainvillea in bloom. Or a window box full of scented herbs. Often it’s an old couple, sitting silently together on a bench in a small garden park. Life lives around every corner.

Even in Paris, there are treats of every sort around the corner. Love blooms in sidewalk cafes. Moon-eyed couples sit at tables smaller than a nickel, having wine or espresso, speaking in whispers. Love drips from their lips.

Around every corner were found my favorite surprises…the early morning patisseries. You’re powerless to pass them by. Their succulent scent of warm, buttered croissants and sweet rolls hovers at the door and seduces you.

In Italy around some corners there is music, or perhaps mimes in a park, maybe even someone handing out red roses to your lady friend. Surprises simply unfold as we wander the sidewalks of life and turn the corners.

There’s always Something around every corner. What is it? Adventure, that’s what, waiting for you as you turn the corner. It’s not going to let you in on its secret. It just waits there, expecting you to show up one day.

Our days and years here are spent in the labyrinth of life. There are twists and turns, dead ends, disappointments, exhilarations, fun and even sadness. We have few choices about what’s around our corners.

Life is not a straight line like we imagine time to be. It’s a series of ever-winding circles. We have no choice but to experience what’s there. Forget about your carefully laid plans and prophesy of the ancients. Neither will prepare us for what’s next.

Serendipity is always around the corner. Maybe it is just a silent breeze that cools hot days, or warm sunrays that break the chill of early morning. But it is there, serendipity hidden in the creases of every maze, waiting for us to find it.

Our minds have learned the habit of fear, unfortunately. Premonitions and superstitions can lurk in the shadows around the corner. But they’re not real, simply phantoms of our imaginations, hollow-eyed skeletons at the banquet of our happiness, uninvited interlopers we have allowed the doorman of the soul to let enter.

There are big things around the corners of life, like long, happy marriages, healthy children, success, fine wine and good friends. These big things happen slowly, and if we could anticipate them, we might not appreciate them.

But it’s the small, seemingly insignificant things of life we encounter around the corner that make our hearts bright and our days glad. A surprise note from an old friend, a new puppy; a delicious blueberry pancake breakfast, a quiet beach walk or a good book, a warm fire to pass a rainy night and smiles while looking at old photographs. So many things so small we take them for granted. But they’re around every corner. Slow down and look.

Sometimes in reverie we may mourn our plight as prisoners of the earth. No one asks to be here, and yet here we are. What are we to do in this labyrinth of life? Nothing? Sit down, quit? No. We’re part of history, ever moving. I have always thought two of the finest words in English are ‘Moving on.’

You’re wondering where this is leading, right? Well, you know already. One day we will turn the corner and look square in the eye of what Emerson calls “The Dread Omniscience.” But not to worry. I think Dr. Crane sums it up nicely:

“And around that Last Corner where we turn to travel the unknown, I do not believe there hides some grisly thing of evil, but a smiling-faced One, with welcome in His hand and the Morning Star for me.”

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Keep moving and enjoy the trip.


Bud Hearn
June 29, 2018