Time To Get Real

Damaged Goods

I have an unusual wake up routine. I rely on the alarm app on my kindle fire to play a loud song to rouse me from my sleep, and then I stand outside on the cold concrete of my porch and stand there until I'm no longer tempted to go back to sleep.

What? I know I'm weird. But that's why you find me so entertaining, right?

Anyway, the other morning I stepped on something hard and squishy. My porch is home to various little frogs during the early morning hours, so I knew what I stepped on immediately. I turned on my porch light and saw the little quarter-sized frog thrashing in agony. My first instinct was to kill it and put it out of it's misery, but something told me to stop and let it be. Since I'm a sucker for animals, and I hadn't wanted to hurt it anyway, I decided to leave it alone.

I hate hurting things, so that little frog was on my mind for the next few hours or so. I avoided looking at the area of my porch where the frog was, when I stepped out of my home to go to work. I didn't want to think about it.

When I woke up the next day and I stepped onto my porch I noticed a little frog hopping a little bit faster and quicker than the others. It was the frog that I had stepped on the day before, none the worse for wear, though it was a little wiser when it came to being in my way.

That frog made me think. How often do people give up on hopeless causes realizing there is nothing they can do? How often do people give up on others they consider damaged beyond repair?