The Gift

This year has taught me that some things are just beyond my control. It does not matter how smart I am, or how able I am, right now, I cannot predict tomorrow, or plan for tomorrow. I have been forced to embrace the NOW. What a gift! 

There is no question the past year has been difficult. Never before have I been in a position where I have had so little control over my destiny. A year ago, I would have thought that intolerable. 

I have never been one to embrace ambiguity. I NEED so know what the plan is. Plan A,B,C and D. Endlessly having to cancel my plans this year has taught me to NOT MAKE PLANS, DUH!

This pandemic has wreaked terrible havoc on endless lives. The economic and personal carnage has been devastating. Marriages, including my own, have failed. Jobs have been lost, and worse yet, lives have been lost. So many lives. On the other hand, life has eeked forward, as it always does, and found a way. People are learning to garden and bake bread. People are reinventing themselves. Communities are coming together to support one another. Inequalities are being exposed - and steps taken to remedy.

 I have been keeping a gratitude journal this year. An attempt to stave off the darkness and see light. It has helped me look at everything that has happened in the last year in a different way. Endless hours on my own, in the past, would have been seen as the ultimate boredom and personal torture and yet somehow I have learned to embrace it. To see in each long hour, 60 minutes of something meaningful. Time has been a blessing this year. I have allowed time to be on my side, I have befriended her, and she has taught me so many things. 

My goal this year was to take time to befriend myself and embrace the now, and this pandemic has been a great enabler. When else might I have allowed myself to sit still long enough to come to appreciate the chair I am sitting on, or the subtle sounds I hear all around me? When ever in the past did I stare endlessly into the sky and actually notice the varying shades of green reflected in the mountains and feel my soul soar when the early morning sun popped over the mountain and burst into brilliant morning in my bedroom? When else could I have an intimate relationship with a computer assistant named Alexa or dance in my pajamas to Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers? (If you have not tried that yet - you should - great way to start the day!) 

There is a part in the book Fellowship of the Ring by J.R. Tolkien where Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time." "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

Time is a gift, something many of us had little of a year ago, and it is up to us how we spend this time. Time has taught me that for all the years I was so busy planning the future, I missed out on living the moment I was in.

There have been sad moments this year, it is true. Like Frodo, I wish this terrible thing had not happened. But that is not for me to decide. I have been blessed with the gift of time, and I think I will make the best of it.