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Woman ties woven blue bandana around white shepherd dog's neck

Where Bushes Have Thorns

Doing what’s hard has never come easy for me.

It sounds silly to say it that way but we all know someone who is only happy when running uphill. Wonderfully strange, absurdly people who blossom when their jaw is clenched and teeth gritted.

I don’t crave that kind of hard exertion. I avoid it. I prefer to stay cool and keep calm, and conserve energy rather than build muscle.

But then a restlessness spreads over.

It’s like how steam builds to move a train or how a bear emerges lean and hungry when the snows begin to melt. It’s an itch to scratch or scab to pick at, a loose thread I need to pull until the whole sweater unravels.

Otherwise, I’d never stray far from home or down a rocky path. I’d never choose to sweat or strain muscle or suffer the brutal cold. I certainly wouldn’t wander where the horseflies bite and mosquitos sting or where the bushes have thorns.

It’s fashionable now to flip a weakness or defect around and call it your superpower. If there’s something to it, then restlessness is mine. Only it’s not a real superpower like something you’d wear a cape for. That’s a little too dramatic for my tastes and not my genre besides.

So, no, not a cape. But maybe a Woven Bandana?

Woven Bandana

Superheroes wear capes, dogs wear bandanas.

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