The Conductor

I live with an operatic chorus.
At least it feels that way, and in each moment one of those choir members has stepped out front to sing their solo. They are men and women, this chorus. Some sing so lovely that I stop and listen and savor; others are so jarring I grimace when they start their solo. But they sing louder than the beauty and try as I may to avoid them, I listen.
They are Self-Loathing and Pride; Guilt and Despair, Confidence and Loneliness, Destruction and Hope, Lust and Love and on and on. Somehow their songs make me, and no matter how I try I never seem to know the melody. I don't know where the song is going. Often I don't even know who is singing until they finish. But I'll find myself mouthing the words to an aria that I do not wish to know, or repeating lyrics to songs from too long ago that I cannot forget.
I wish I knew the song of my heart, of my character; wish I could read the music of my bests and worsts and direct them. The people I most admire seem to walk though life with a conductors baton in their hands, waving off the swells and beckoning the sweetness.
Oh to go from audience to conductor.