"I have to climb through and over many obstacles
for those breath taking moments
of flying above the clouds." ~ KateyB
In the beginning of a new year
I like what Steinbeck wrote back on January 1, 1941 (and it even seems more fitting after having visited the places he lived and still haunts):
"Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded.
Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked [the influential microbiologist] Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like." ~ Steinbeck
So I am left to make choices yet again as this new year begins just as every human must do. I can choose to flavor my perspective with an attitude of gratitude. compassion and ultimately love yet I can also make choices within that framework to live as best I can with what I have in the midst of circumstances I really have no control over anyway. The control is in my attitude and perspective and the choices I make in that framework.
I look around me and see much depressive anger and angst being expressed towards one another in an environment that currently is not encouraging building relationships via working things out but rather simply building walls around each lonely self. If the outward environment were allowed to dictate my inner environment I would surely implode where many explode. It is the nature of my process to implode rather than explode.
BUT long ago (now) ~ the years have passed so quickly I near missed how many are gone ~ I discovered and learned well that no set of circumstances and environments can touch my inner life where the core is love in spite of all the criticisms and hecklings and put downs thrown at that core by the environment including betrayers who wish not success but project the anger of their own mess.
I am not supposed to have gentle breezes to sail easily across the ocean of time. I am supposed to hone my skills in navigating while maintaining the ship's heart. Learn and apply and learn some more and while doing that do the best I can with what I have. Overcome my shortcomings one by one and keep trying to care about others along the way as well.
As 2016 ended with so much turmoil around the globe and huge turmoil within the country I live I observed increasing anger and fears that left so many at odds with one another in a time when what was needed most was a building of stronger and even more caring relationships. BUT I too have not given up HOPE ~ for when hope is totally lost and gone so shall I be gone in this human form. Interestingly enough hopelessness also dies with its death ~ and life in the universe goes on in many forms. Cyclical indeed.
I firmly believe that each human being is personally responsible of peace and increased love and I can only make it start/continue with me and my attitude ~ I choose gratitude.
Someone wrote: What will the theme of your life be in 2017?
I think that is a good question to ask and answer rather than what resolutions will I make.
My theme will be gratitude for all lessons and love to help continue to build relationships. In my world anger and angst in the environment is simply begging for me to gain more compassion and learn more ways to love. My heart is alive in Love.
