Unfinished Thoughts
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Carpe Diem - It's Now or Never
"Can you believe that half of the
year is already gone?" my colleague and friend tossed out the other day
during
our daily phone call.
"What?" I responded, actually
stunned at the thought. Being someone who is usually aware of time
passing, I
was surprised that I hadn't thought of it myself. She continued to
rattle on
about how, once again, she had let herself be caught in the web of
everyone
else's drama so much so that her own life had been put on hold. "Aside
from the
work we do together, I feel as though I've wasted the past 6 months," she
said.
My mind wandered back to February
when our son announced his intention to separate from his wife. I
immediately
foresaw the ramifications of such a decision and went into panic mode,
trying
to put the pieces of the puzzle together so as to save the day as well
as the
marriage.
"What happened?" I asked him trying
to quell the panic in my voice, knowing that questions always seem like
judgments. "You seemed perfectly happy last summer when you were home.
Surely
it can be fixed. At the very least you need to do some therapy. Think
about the
consequences down the line."
There was no end to my suggestions
and possible remedies as I obsessed night and day trying to fix it.
Hadn't that
been my role all along-to put Band Aids on my children's wounds? Aha,
but my
son was no longer a child and what's more I hadn't been in his marriage
so what
did I know. Eventually, somewhere between March and April I threw in the
towel
and then sunk into a kind of depression that shoots down all hope. So
continued
my winter of discontent where I did nothing but lick my psychic wounds
and
exist in a murky fog, that is until the phone rang this morning and I
woke up!
In trying to avoid the messiness of
life I had retreated from everyone and everything like a petulant child
who
failed to get here way and in the process never once seized the day-all
180 of
them. Thus my beloved winter is now but a blur and I failed to smell the
lilacs
in spring. Hadn't I learned anything in the past ten years as I searched
my
soul for life's meaning? Didn't I preach to others that change is
inevitable
and what we're meant to do is simply adapt? And wasn't I always quoting,
The
Prophet as he counseled those of us with children to realize that we
could
give them our love but not our thoughts for they have their own
thoughts. "You may house their bodies but not their
souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot
visit,
even in your dreams."
So now it is time to put the focus
back on my life-enough of the grief-time to rejoin the human race and be
my
buoyant self. I cannot make up for the lost months but I can celebrate
summer
and fall and relish the next 180 days.
Live it or miss it altogether. It will be different, to be sure. The
matriarch is gone (my mother), the family
has been reconfigured, relatives who have not been here for years are
coming
and others are choosing not to come. Be that as it may, I am in needing
of
seizing the season, caring not for who is or isn't here.
Re-enchantment is the work ahead
and joy is a duty. Just this morning I awakened to crisp morning air
after a particularly
muggy week, smelled freshly brewed coffee perking on the stove thanks to
my
husband, listened to a cacophony of multiple birds heralding the dawn,
and
walked through delicious dewy grass to pick up the morning paper. A good
beginning to the rest of my life, I should think.
It's Fourth of July weekend-vacation time for
most. Although I am not going anywhere-not vacating the premises-I am
going to
vacate myself from worry, feeling powerless, being sad, to say nothing
of being
out of control.
On my walk the other day I noticed
a large blue hydrangea blossom which had pushed itself through a crack
in a
stockade fence. It will be a symbol for my recovery-to push myself out
of the
doldrums and begin to receive the gifts of ordinariness. Time to engage
again
with my body, put up boundaries when needed, walk the beach both morning
and
night, and receive all that is waiting to be found. Although I cannot
control all that life
throws at me I have learned that I can control who I am along the way.
Carpe Diem. May you too seize your
days.
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