Mid-Donut

Mid-Donut

Recently an old friend from high school posted a picture on FaceBook. It wasn’t a very good picture. It was overexposed, not level and the subject was off center. There was a young lady getting ready to take what appeared to be her second bite of a succulent little pastry. The caption read:

“Caught Mid-Donut”.

All of a sudden everything was clear.

What an exquisitely simplistic and clarifying phrase: “Mid-Donut”.

That’s the place. That’s the goal. Take me to there. Take me to the “Mid-Donut”

Before going further I must confess there is a possibility I may be placing an exaggerated emphasis on pastry treats. For the last month I have been attempting to change the way I eat. There are a number of reasons for this. None of which are unique to me. They include my health, my appearance and an inseparable sense of duty and love for my wife and kids. Consequently, the last 4 weeks have seen my diet stripped of things that have been held sacrosanct to me for nearly 45 years. Potatoes, pasta, buscuits & gravy, cookies, cakes and what often seemed to be every sliver of human goodness and decency have been left by the plate side of my life’s dinner table. Let’s face it. If you are addicted to carbs as I was and suddenly remove them from your diet be prepared. There will be moments of longing so fierce for a bowl of mashed potatoes or a slice of wonder bread that you would seriously consider strangling a complete stranger.

This is to say. My judgement is either clouded in a fog of longing and regret or it is clarified and focused as it has never been before. You’ll have to decide.

But, since I am in this ethereal, emotional limbo where I cannot be entirely certain of my motivations or judgement it is the perfect time to make a life altering decision. Check That!, A WORLD ALTERING decision.

I am starting a cult!

Welcome to the Order of the Mid-Donut!

Easy Now!  My cult is different. But to be fair I would imagine that is exactly what every cult leader would tell you as well. But reaaaaaally, it’s different. Every time we see a cult they are having a shootout with federal authorities, burning up in a ball of flames, committing mass suicides, raping and pillaging their members or attempting to get Donald Trump the nomination for President. Cults, heretofore, require you to turn away from your past and your heritage. Cults make you replace your faith with something vapid and fake. Cults make you forget yourself.  Well, not this cult.

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• We don’t want your money.
• We don’t want your allegiance.
• We don’t want you to ignore your past.
• We don’t want you to fear the future. Period.
• Most of all, and this can’t be overstated.We don’t want you coming to live with us. 
• First of all I don’t have the room and the only good thing about communes is that it is easy to avoid a lot of people I probably don’t want to be around in the first place.

Just stay where you are!

The Order of the Mid-Donut just wants you to strive every day to find and recognize the beauty, the joy, the simplicity and the hope that is Mid-Donut. It is by no means a religion. But it is more than a state of mind. It is more than an attitude. It’s a philosophical sugar high, as it were. It’s the ideal of an esoteric plane of consciousness or unconsciousness as the case may be.

I know what you’re thinking. “FROM A DONUT?”

Hear me out. Donuts are like life, I think. Screw it!  It is my blog. Donuts are like life.

No two are ever the same. It takes a series of complicated events and reactions to create a donut and then to mold a donut into the donut it is meant to be. They come in countless varieties: Jelly, chocolate, cream-filled, crullers, long johns, colored sprinkles, powdered and now with the CRONUT

apparently the French have finally joined the rest of humanity, albeit reluctantly. Heck, I’m sure there is some gluten-free donut out there made with garbanzo bean flour, coconut lard and sprinkled with GMO-free, organic paprika that was ground under the hooves of free-range, pygmy yaks. It takes all kinds. The options are limited only to the imagination. Some won’t be to your taste but each one is somebody’s tasty treat.  Sound familiar?

Think about it. Mid-Donut is that glorious moment where those two exquisite feelings of

elation-realized and elation-anticipated finally coexist. You have just bitten into the donut and felt the exhilaration and satisfaction that you had been anticipating. AND, Oh a beautiful word AND, as you enjoy all its pastry goodness, now you get to start anticipating taking your next bite.  You know why? You have MORE donut left to eat. That is a pretty phenomenal crossroad of emotions.

What if we made it a point to find that emotional crossroad all of the time?

What, if every day we not only savored the extraordinary journey we have all taken by appreciating the life we have led? All the life we’ve led with the good and the bad. We should celebrate the triumphs and appreciate the failures. We should awe at the struggle and the fact of still being here. At the same time, what if we embraced, regardless of where we are on life’s journey, having the opportunity to take another bite of our proverbial donut. It may be a small nip or a huge mouth full. It doesn’t really matter. It is the fact as long as we are here we have more servings to come of this joyous, maddening, affirming, frustrating, incomparable donut we call life. That is the essence of "Mid Donut".

• We want you to love, honor and remember your past. All of it.
• We want you to embrace your faith or find your faith as a promise of what is to come.
• We want you to taste different donuts.
• We want you be excited with what is around the corner and the opportunities and promises of  donuts to come.
• We want you to share your donuts.(Proverbially and literally. If you go to Krispy Kreme what would it hurt to get an extra dozen?  JUST SAYING!”

I recognize the irony. At least for the time being I can’t even have a donut. But God knows I have had my fair share to this point. I also don’t mean to belittle the precious and sacred gift that is life by comparing it to a ball of lard, flour and sugar. I know life isn’t that simple. For certain the struggles, challenges and evils that will surely be faced throughout any life are neither easy nor trivial.

What I also know is at this very instant we are standing here in our entirety. A complex compilation of the moments in our lives that led us to HERE! The struggles, the chances, the wins, the losses, the tragedies, the triumphs, the horrible mistakes and the lucky guesses all blended and got us to HERE! Right smack dab in the middle of the donut. We have the opportunity of what’s next. We get another bite. We may get thousands of bites to go along with all the other bites. We should do what we can to be thankful or at least content, if not joyful, for the past. They, for better or worse, have prepared us for the awesome opportunity we have to come. It has given us reason to be hopeful and daring and faithful and really anything we care to be. That’s a gift. That’s a helluva intersection! That’s a place to spend some time.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m not starting a cult.

Like I said, my mind is either foggy from sugar-withdrawal or it is cosmically clear. The jury is still out. For the record though, I would make a horrible cult leader. Communal-living creeps me out and let’s face it. Eventually, “THE GROUP” is gonna expect me to eat quinoa and to make my own soap and that’s just crazy. Put more simply and to paraphrase Groucho Marx: “I wouldn’t want to be part of any cult that would be willing to have me as their leader!”  Maybe we can just get t-shirts made or coffee mugs. Coffee and donuts mmmmmmmmmmm. That is a whole other post.

I would however like to find it. That crossroads, that millisecond, that blink in time where appreciation and anticipation intercede. I want to find and keep finding the Mid-Donut. It is exactly where you are whether you realize it or not. It isn’t always easy to see. It occurs constantly all the while changing second by second. It is there for the taking but at times you’re going to have to search and search hard. But, Oooooh, when you find it……..goodness, gracious that’s a good donut. 

Remember! Pick up an extra dozen to share!