Souls at the Carousel

A Wake-Up Call from the Baggage of the Soul

I arrive at the interdimensional airport at life’s end. Souls crowd around the baggage carousel, waiting. We expect suitcases stuffed with belongings or even memories to roll past ready to be claimed.

Instead, the carousel delivers telling fragments of past lives, metaphysical baggage rolling forward for each of us to retrieve.

The first to enter the carousel of past self is a broken violin. Its varnish is cracked, its strings curled in on themselves. It is heavy with silenced music. A bearded man steps forward and lifts it gently. He cradles it to his heart like something both sacred and lost. He seems sad, knowing there will be no more music, no chance to create it.

Next comes a love letter, unfinished, unsigned, never sent. Its pages glow faintly pink with love but are tatty and frayed at the edges, as though forgotten in a drawer too long. An elderly man scoops it up and tucks it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He turns to stare out the airport window, wondering what might have been had he ever found the courage to send it, send the love.

Then an empty teacup appears on the carousel, clinking gently against its saucer as it teeter totters towards its soul owner. Inside, the tea leaves form a message only its owner can decipher. A small, hunched woman steps forward and lifts it with trembling hands. She gazes into the leaves. They tell of missed opportunities, of unseen mercies, of gifts turned away. She cups the teacup close, sighs into it, and breathes in her regrets.

I wait, heart thudding, eyes on the carousel, wondering what my baggage will be.

Then I see it: an alarm clock, analog with twin bells. Its face glows white as it circles toward me. The alarm erupts the moment it reaches me, shrill and insistent.

I know it is mine.

Time … my lifelong burden. Fear of it running out. Never enough of it. Always believing I should be elsewhere, doing something else. Wishing for the future to deliver happiness instead of living in the present moment, relishing the goodness already here.

Its twin bells shudder as the hammer slams between them, each strike a summons: Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Image source: Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash