Liz Esquirol -

Ode to the Tissue

Oh tissue. You are a wonder. What would we do without you?

You perform so many tasks without fail. You’re there for us when we’re sick – expelling fluids from our crevices. You console us when we are sad and grieving, right by our side the entire way. You help us stay clean and tidy – the janitor of hygiene.

My mother always had a whole bunch of you hibernating in her cavernous pocketbook, next to her minty packets of Wrigley’s gum. My grandmother would have you tucked delicately away in the cuff of her blouse or sweater, always at the ready. As an adolescent, before I blossomed, my girlfriends and I would use you for padding – with hope that someday nature would take its course and we wouldn’t need you anymore.

We don’t give you enough credit. For just being there – in our darkest and brightest moments. We do tend to overuse you – leaving our nostrils red and raw. We love you nonetheless. The back of our sleeves will never take your place. You are the epitome of sanitary!

I hate to use the word disposable but that’s what makes you so special. You pop up, ready to be of service in your fancy colored box. You come in small and big packages, travel sized and deluxe. Sometimes you even have lotion built in. How very kind of you to make sure we always feel good…to soften the blows (if you will) of life.

You are a multi use paper product. You are one part tissue, and one part napkin. You wipe, absorb, clean, and serve double duty when the toilet paper runs out.

You are passed around regularly – at weddings and funerals and schools. You are a vessel, a receptacle for all that we wish to rid our bodies of. You are the camping companion when there are no flushing facilities around. Leaves can never replace you. Never.

So how can we ever thank you? I’m not sure we can. The best we can do is to continue to reach for you as our favorite feather-light friend to carry us through the moisture of life.

Buddha Balboa

The Pet Peeve (or Can You Not Do That, Please?)

Look. I say please…a lot. I was taught Please and Thank You and Bless You and Excuse Me and all the other niceties we share on a daily basis. But pet peeves, or things that annoy, are a whole different ball of wax. Different game, different rules. There are things that get under our skin – actions by others that we don’t get – and they bother us to beat the band. These pet peeves we’ve developed in life are subjective – your peeve may not be my peeve…by a mile. So what makes them grate against our sense of well-being? I mean, what does it matter if someone chews with their mouth open? Or taps their pencil incessantly when you’re trying to work? Or blows their nose at the dinner table while you’re still eating? (Oh, sorry, that’s my husband. He has a bit of a sinus issue and I forgive him because, well, that’s love.)

Buddha Balboa

To Paragraph or To Post

A writer’s dilemma – do I paragraph or do I post? Producing content – consistently – is part of the game. And so I struggle with having to produce posts for my social media accounts to keep followers engaged AND to actually get down to the writing, the paragraphing, the story telling.

Time management gurus would say we all have the same 24 hours in a day – ok, sure, they are right. No one’s yet to create a formula to time travel or to magically attach an extra 60 minutes onto the earth’s rotation. There are places on our planet where they get more daylight, and others where darkness is predominant at certain times of the year. (Side note – how do people manage that? Talk about messing with your natural sleep cycles! I guess it’s a good thing I live in the northeast United States so I don’t have one more sleep obstacle to hurdle.)

Buddha Balboa

The Art of Nothing Matters

Nothing matters. Nothing. No thing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

No, really – think about it. Your perceived insurmountable annoyances – your problems at work, your dwindling bank account, your bad knee, your ex, your age, your place in line, your broken toilet. These are but potholes in the highway of life. And dare I say, don’t really matter.

I want to be clear here – I’m not saying that what you experience and feel – and what you feel about those feelings isn’t real – they are. But they don’t really matter. Why? Because our judgement is cloudy at best – formed by our flat tires and the man-made belief in the concept of lack.