Wake Up Calls

In a city like Saint John, at a time like Spring, many people are receiving their Winter-Wake-Up-Calls from hibernation. Spring cleaning has once again come around, the snow has all melted, the birds have returned and people are waking up to smell the roses.

Our wake up call back to life is felt very strongly during this early-Spring time, but are we heeding the wake up calls we are handed day to day?

As a younger, less experienced, immature girl, I remember thinking a lot. Not just your normal run-of-the-mill thinking either, I thought deep, long and hard about every possible subject. At one time, I pondered wake up calls. I contemplated what it would take to "wake up" some people, to give them some sign that some of the choices that they made in life were not always the smartest ones.

Sometimes it does take something drastic, some desperate measure of the fates.

My cousin, a chain smoker, had a wake up call the other month when she found out she had possibly terminal lung cancer. She has not touched a cigarette since, but the damage has already been done. My Uncle, a wonderful man and a great father, had the wake up call of his life when his wife packed up and left him for someone else.

A while ago, I used to hope some people would receive their wake up calls. I used to hope that some people would stop doing the things that they did.

Actually, I just wished they'd stop altogether without having to have the disastrous wake up I had in mind. But for some people, it was the only way. And although my bullies never received their life-changing moment I desperately hoped for, after time, they moved on to bully others.

Leaving me to think, does it have to take a school shooting, bombing or suicide to show us that we can hurt people beyond all measure? We can destroy their souls, their minds, their drive for life. We can, and do, destroy people until they get to the point where they truly feel they have nothing to lose.

I found myself thinking all this over again last night, as I lay in bed on the phone.

"Do you ever just think to yourself, next year, I'm going to do everything right. I'm going to do my homework, go to class on time, be nice to everyone and eat healthy?"

"Of course," He says. "But there's a difference between thinking something, and doing it. And I would need a pretty big wake up call to completely change my life around like that."

Right. Everyone does. We're all just living our lives the way that we do, completely unaware that one day, a life changing event will come along and blow our socks off.

I think I got mine.



In a city like Saint John, at a time like Spring, many people are receiving their wake up calls. Your actions will not go unconsequencial. Someday, some time, somewhere, there will be a price to pay.