A New Year
I’m old and tired. It’s been a good life for me, not so much for others. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, I know. My main focus was myself. What I could get for myself. How much I could use others to attain the glory that was me. And I did well, despite what everyone else says.
As I said, I’m old and tired. I know that these are my last days. With no heirs to speak of, I have reflected on what I should do with all of my worldly goods. I would like to leave it all to a monument in my name. It would be glorious. But now I must sleep.
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It is the night of my last sleep and a vision comes to me. It is sort of like that from the Dickens story, “A Christmas Carol”. I see the world through the eyes of all those I had ruled over. I see the kind of person I really am. I try to rationalize that I was a good person… but I never was. I hurt a lot of people, where I could have helped. Something inside me breaks. I am not the good person I believed I was. I have wasted the wealth on myself when it should have gone to others. I want to change, but it is too late.
As the morning comes I wake up crying. But it is not to my voice, but to a baby’s. As I open my eyes, I am in a hospital. Things look very fuzzy at first. It takes me a while to focus. There is a woman lying on a gurney. I appear to be upside down and am covered with slime. There are no mirrors for me to get a look at myself, but when I look towards my feet I realize that I am not who I think I am. I’m no longer old and tired. I’m a newborn and for the moment quite unhappy. I’m brought to this woman and find myself comforted as she smiles down at me. I am very confused, but the closeness of her body calms me. There is a man in the room also holding the hand of that woman and also smiling down at me with what appear to be tears of joy streaming down his face.
My mind runs through all the things that I did in my life. Is this a dream also? Slowly I realize that it is not.
I will be able to change who I was. This time I will make sure of it. I bask in the warmth and comfort of the people around me I know that this time will be different. This will be my second chance.
As the minutes turn to hours, my memories of my past life begin to fade. Soon they are all gone and he is left as an innocent babe.
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So ends the tale. Will he change as he grows up? Will the caring family that brought him into the world this time continue to care for him as they raise him, the way he wanted to be raised? Only time will tell.
