Time for a new year
Healing moves you through the turmoil, the regular assault on your being, to move past that which is preventing you from being all that you are meant to be, to knowing that you belong here. Your very existence is good and necessary. Cyndi Jones New York Times 12/24/18
Here it is again, the time when we reflect on the year that's passed, maybe on our whole past, and have hope for the new year. I’m remembering the moment years ago when I realized how angry I was that I couldn’t control time. I felt it should be my right. Not exactly a mature perspective. And if I could control time, I would most certainly end up losing many of the developments it brings. When things feel perfect though—like the sterling moment of a brand new year, gliding in on the unassailable feeling of having completed good and important work in the newly passed year and filled with the fresh memory of celebrating with those we love—it might be nice to be able to stop it. Instead, I hit pause at my favorite coffee place and think again of my great good fortune, with a poignancy highlighted by the contrast of recent and long ago losses that are always more pronounced this time of year. Old souls come back to visit. The recently departed aren’t yet fully gone.
Time is one of those invisible things, like emotion, that you know is real but you can't touch it. You can feel it and can see its evidence, leaves turning brown and falling, paint chipping, lines on your face deepening. See, I went for the negative right away. What about a child learning to walk, what about completing a song or poem or book, what about becoming really good at something after years of working at it? What about healing?
Time is precious, of course. Everything that we value and can't control is precious. If you can control something, you start to take it for granted. But being able to take something for granted isn't all bad; it doesn't mean we're thoughtless or cruel. It's a beautiful part of life to be able to take someone's love for granted—like your mother's. Shouldn't we have that right or luxury once in a while? Taking tomorrow for granted is one of those wonderful luxuries, a comfort. To live every day thinking it might be your last could make you crazy, make you actually miss the moment. To tiptoe around your parents or partner because you don't want their love to stop is no way to live; you can't even receive love in that state let alone give it. So I'm taking it for granted today that I am loved, that I'll be here tomorrow, that you will be here tomorrow. And feel free to take me for granted today—that I appreciate you, value you and your support, your reading my words, your contributions to our world. I'll grant you that.
Seeing the future
Please follow me here (Facebook), there (Instagram) and everywhere (Twitter). It's a pretty exclusive club. And buy my book, on Indiebound.org, BarnesandNoble.comAmazon.com, And come see Mary Lee's Corvette perform Blood on the Tracks at Joe's Pub, NYC, 1/24/2019 (tickets here). That's a lot of instruction, but I'm a good teacher, really!