Where Are the Cans?

It started again this morning about 5:00 AM. This canine soloist lives just two doors down, across the street in our small West Texas town.

Just about EVERYBODY in Sundown America owns at least one critter or two. Many have more than three. Somehow, largely due to the tender heart of my spouse, our own home has been animal orphanage and permanent foster home to six cats and dogs, down from a population of l0 which included birds.

We love animals. They frequently are sources for home entertainment, as well as anecdotal humor now that our three boys have flown the nest, . . . sort of.

I’ve never met this canine opera singer: can’t tell you the breed, it’s sex, or height and weight. I just know it’s not a howler when it begins the morning and evening song of its ancestors.

OwwwwOhhhOwwwOOOOOwwwww!

Such a tale of misery and woe. I can picture Edmond Dante’s, from The Count of Monte Cristo moaning his fate from his dungeon cell on the Isle of Elba. (A reference to classical literature to impress you. 😃)

There are days I feel as if I am surrounded by people who feel they are likewise trapped in their own prisons of despair. Some are cocooned in the consequences of their own making. Others have been wounded by the arrows from friends and family, many easy targets of the ever-present social media we can’t seem to resist.

If you spend much time listening to them, . . . and some have horrific personal scars they carry, . . . there seems a common thread running through their stories. First, it’s the painful, wounding moments that have frozen their emotions in time. Secondly, they are looking for sympathetic co-sufferers. Thirdly, “I can’t” peppers their conversation.

Even the most empathetic people I know arrive at a moment when the I Can’ts start to drag on their spirits. And if you start digging for possible solutions to their predicaments, it doesn’t take long for the "but, but, buts" to slap you in the face. Press any deeper and  it's easy to figure out “I Don't Want To” is the underlying truth. Wave after wave of I Can’ts will swamp even the most positive attitude.

Where are the I Cans? Where are the warriors who have overcome . . .

• Pain, physical and emotional
• Bad and failing relationship
• Physical disabilities
• Death of friends and/or family 
•  Racial discrimination 
• Religious prejudice 
•  Professional failure 
•  Limitations of aging

Pondering this, I took a tour of the mental portraits of I Can people I’ve collected over the years. Most I've never met, but their lives, the obstacles stacked against them, and their influence over total strangers have impacted my own story.

I started to list them of here, but realized each one deserves their own attention, carefully given.

Some lived and struggled and thrived over 100 years ago. Others are more my contemporaries.

Stay tuned for the six-pack of my I Can Collection.