Pins and Needles

Do you remember when you were a kid and you had run out of normal games to play like hide-and-seek, tag, or truth or dare and you'd just start making games up? 

I remember playing "chest" with my friend Darrell and we would just take turns punching each other on the chest as hard as we could until one of us gave up. Well, to be honest, Darrell was the school bully and I just agreed to play this game with him because I figured that if I didn't he'd beat me up anyway. At least this way I could hit him back and not fear for my life. My dad told me about a game he played growing up. He lived in a ranch when he was younger and from time to time the kids from the surrounding farms would get together and they'd throw rocks at each other! Oh, don't look so surprised. I'm sure there's a beautiful young lady out there that used to eat bugs with her friends just to pass the time on some hot summer day.

A neighbor of mine had this obsession with having a few of us sit on our hands until they would fall asleep just so we could feel the tingly sensation when they start to "wake up" again. You know the feeling because you've felt it too, wether it was from your arm falling asleep because you were to nice to tell that person leaning on it that their head was way too fat and heavy, or from sitting on your leg in class. It feels like a thousand tiny little pins and needles are just prodding and poking at the palm of your hand (or leg) when the blood starts rushing back in it. Like I said earlier, it's that feeling that your senses are "waking up."

Many of us have been asleep for so long. We've grown up believing so much about the world, people, religion, and everything else simply because it's what we've been told. But are we thinking long and hard about these ideologies that we've cemented in our heads as the absolute truth? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to claim that everything you've ever known as a lie and if you take the red pill you'll wake up in the real world. I'm simply inviting you on a conversation that provokes thought. I'm inviting you to keep reading, to agree or disagree, to question and probe. I'm inviting you to wake up and ask yourself if you're really thinking.

And if it feels as uncomfortable as pins and needles poking and prodding at the palm of your hand, pay attention to that...because it's probably a sign that you're waking up.