Gazing in the Mirror

December 31 - Completion

I was something that lay
under the sun and felt it,
like the pumpkins, and I
did not want to be anything
more.
~ Willa Cather

More we could not ask, more
could not be given than that
which has been given from the
foundations of the Universe.
~ Ernest Holmes

I love this day of the year. A chance to wrap up all the loose ends and make ready my open receptivity for something "new" to enter in even if it is just changing the year that I enter on correspondence and bank notes. I like the feeling that no matter where I am in the process of living I can pause during this moment of transition and consider some part of that lifetime now forever complete. Whatever the last year was or wasn't it is now complete. There is no changing it. We could translate that to each day as the sun sets and we head off to sleep. As the sun rises and a new day begins. We could translate that to each moment, to each breath. We can remember that there is an eternity available to us in the NOW moment which ever IS but paradoxically is also the only moment that we can actually live or act within.

The ending of a year reminds me that endings are a good thing. A chance to stop focusing on progress and take stock of where I actually am now. It is an opportunity to rethink how I will live on a new day with the beginning of a new year and a new decade. I will take more considerate care of this body. Feeding it with foods that I both like and that are good at supplying what my body needs. And I will not burden it with too much weight for my frame which the foundation of my bones must support. And I will not overwork this body but give it enough sleep. I will also let my body do what it was created to do and move and by those movements exercise this body to keep it supple and flexible. This life includes breathing lungs and beating heart and I will be grateful for this opportunity to experience both of these in the only place that I can – this lifetime that I am living in a physical body.

At this time of year I make an ending in the accounting books for our business and take stock of the changes that have taken hold in the last year. I can look at the ways we have embraced the "new" of social media and how we have come back from impersonal voice mail and email to make more personal one-on-one connections with people again. I can look at the ways that we have made ourselves more conscious of the people we do business with, finding interactions that we can enjoy even while being mutually beneficial to one another. I like finding that through business I can express a cooperative spirit. I feel satisfaction in knowing that part of what I do in business is share the knowledge we have gained by a quarter century of caring about the resources of this planet. I like that I can make use of modern communications technology to share my knowledge with others by writing a weekly blog for our business. These new directions for our business are ways I feel good about being in business. I also look forward to continuing to be involved in the stewardship of this piece of forested land and allowing that to be some of the work that I do with my presence on this planet.

As I was first writing this essay in 2013, I was also looking forward to expanding my identity as a writer. I have shifted my attention to that desire by freeing up some of the time that has been spent in social online community without ceasing my involvement entirely. Being part of a social online community remains important to me even while I choose to allow myself more free time for other pursuits. I have managed to free up 4 hours most afternoons and spend that time in quiet seclusion away from family demands, telephone and internet and focused upon the work at hand.  I hope to move forward towards publication in the new decade. I am open and receptive to whatever that may look like and do seek commercial publication and the assistance of a literary agent. What I have been doing with my writing is achieving a kind of closure with the most significant events of my lifetime - executing well my deceased parents' estate and discovering who my true grandparents were (both of my parents being adopted and dying knowing next to nothing about their own cultural roots). There is a desire within me to gather the insights and my experiences into a more enduring and solid form. Of course, I hope that my work is of value to someone else in the telling.

I delight in the maturing of my children and my grandchildren and enjoy the sense of physical continuity through their lives. I look forward to developing ever deeper relationships with my descendants. I also appreciate my mortality as I have witnessed the final leavings of a whole generation of human beings, aware of their individual contributions and emphasizing the fleeting reality of human life. In 2015, I experienced my mother dying and ended the year with my father in ICU after a stroke. With my mother's death, my father's eventual passing became more inevitable in my own mind. There is a sweetness yet. My mother was always dominant and center in our family relationships. My mother's passing made possible a closer relationship with my sisters and for each of us with our father. My father passed away 4 months after my mother in 2016.  I do intend to savor all of the moments left to me for communicating with my loved ones regardless of their ages. The continuity of Life upon the planet seems eternal while the dissolution of forms remains constant and integral to Life's progress and renewal.

So I come to the end of yet another year. In 2019 I celebrated my 65th year on this planet. I find reaching that age both surprising and an indication that I have somehow proven myself successful at surviving on this planet. Seeing others younger than I am take their leave of life by dying reminds me that I have already lived a complete life. Even so, I am in no hurry to leave my own life permanently. I accept the inevitability that the death that I have seen come to pass in the lives of others will eventually come to pass in my own. I am grateful for maturity and the wisdom of long experience. I enjoy the reminders of the young people around me to remain open to the newness of change. The date of the year changing reminds me that my life, my experiences, the friends and family I enjoy, the world that I inhabit forms a wholeness on a continuum of ever changing cycles that are both of short and long durations. I love the ending of a year and honor all of the endings in my life as they occur. I am always grateful that every ending is a packet of reality enveloped in a limited container. Good-bye old, welcome new.

~ perspective

I realize the fleeting nature of
all things and that someday there
will be nothing left of everything
that is now but there will be
something else that previously
was not.
Peace comes with the quiet death
of winter when rest is sensible.
I see the buds waiting at the end
of tree branches for the return
of Spring and the birth of new things.
My life feels like a kind of clock that
is measuring the passage of time.
It is the way of things that as one
year ends, another begins.

#beginnings #completion #desire #eternity #focus #goals #new #openness #past #reflection