Two Hundred Eighty-Two

I can stare at the yellow lines on a desolate asphalt highway for hours, creating my own fantasy with nothing but wishes as fuel. Why can’t I, instead, imagine the joy of making intricate carvings in wood that’s hard as steel, using only a fine axe as a tool? Why, indeed. I think it’s the understanding that choices have consequences; every option has positive and negative outcomes that may be utterly unrelated to the original alternative but that follow as surely as water flows from a melting mass of ice.