A Familiar Story (A Musing on Hedonism)

    
Turn out the lights. I want to tell you a story.
   
You will have heard it before, but that doesn't matter.
   
You see, this is a story you can hear over and over, from the beginning of the rainbow, until the end of time, and you will never get bored...because this, is your story.
    
I was born on the breath of a whisper. On the wing-beat of a winter moth. Silently. On a summer night, filled with stars. It was cold enough for frost and there were beach fires burning along the shores of every island. The light of a full moon, shone across the water, and the sun, burned brightly, a distance away; all blue, and red, and hot. Bells could be heard , over the hills, and the people all turned to listen. They opened their souls to me, like I was something special, to be cherished. I still don't know if I am, or not.
   
I grew up in a thousand heart beats, dancing to the rhythm of every one. I poked out and sniffed the scented air of spring, and felt the snowflakes fall softly on my face. I rose up on a leafy tree branch, a soap bubble, and the essence of joy, all draped in gold. And I saw the sky turn pink, and orange, and azure, and I knew; that was where I wanted to go.
    
I went to school in a satchel, in a book bag, in the bottom of a pocket with the dust and the beech nuts. I  shared my space with swap cards and metal cars, hair clips and pretty stones. But never once was I offered for trade.
   
I was carried in a lunch box, stashed away in a classroom tray, with a sandwich, an apple, a pair of gloves, and the occasional fairy cake. Selfishly kept and secretly stowed, I gorged whatever was offered. Later I lived in a secret space, a high school locker, or the back of a diary page. Ever absent, but always there, unseen, but plain as day. 
    
Now I live on your desk, in your car, in the view from a mountain top. Singing my song at the other side of all the bridges you still, long to cross. I am every brick in the yellow road, every step you should hold, but cannot help but take. The wrong decisions you should not have made, all the things you selfishly did 'instead'. I am all the times you went anyway, when devotion or duty denoted you should stay. I am the part of you that stands up and says: I deserve, I will, I wish, I want...I live for me and today.
    
I am your egotistic, inconsiderate dreams. And there is nothing wrong with yielding, sometimes, to me. I am your narcissist, who demands rewards for your quest. Put all the treasure in my hands. I don't want to resist. I reside inside all of you, I am, your eternal hedonist.
 
Go on...you know you want to... ;)