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NEAR THE END OF OUR ORBIT
Friday Dec. 30, 2016
No longer rare or medium, this baby’s well done – perhaps overdone, this year is done, time to crack open a new one, remove 2017 from its crate to MAKE LIFE GREAT AGAIN (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
And we must remember this …
A year isn’t a thing. It’s state of mind, of being, no different than yesterday or today but we hold this mental construct of calendar, new accounting period, fresh ledger. Blank slate. Empty plate. New frontier, energy to harness, ways-to-be-found, moments to create, changes to make.
Look back on 2016, cringe a little – so much turmoil, loss, tragedy. Have we seen more trouble, or just less good, than other years? Wars, elections, crime, doping and defections – splashed with hatred, good works, deceptions and best intentions – each year containing its measure of these. Our planet scarcely notices, though lately we’ve been noticing climate more, wondering; first, wa this really paradise? And, second, are we collectively wrecking it? Paradise or parking lot? What does paradise and/or success in 2017 look like to you?
If we only look at our own lives, our close friends and family, our work and our passions – how was it in 2016? I think it was a fantastic year for getting many things squared away in my life and I feel more poised and ready than I can remember since I was 20. But, poised and ready as I was at 20, I had no clear sense of direction beyond some very basic things about making my way, making a living, and making a family. I was doing what I was taught – but parental example, by societal expectations and the baby-boomer common goals of living better than our parents who’d lived through a depression, a world war, ‘the bomb’ and the Cuban missile crisis. We were set, weren’t we?
The cold war, the sixties (the wild part, the hot days in July, assassinations, Viet Nam) … ours was no less scary or unpredicted that our parents’ reality had been. And now as our children enter potentially choppy water and our grandchildren are oblivious to their future – what can we count on for our own?
My present, my future – I see them from here – full of promise and opportunity. Full of dreams, full of plans, full of wonder, sometimes I ponder if I’m nearer this twilight or that dawn.
It would be easy to count the rings on the tree trunk and say, “enough of that – time to sit back and enjoy my reclining years”. But I don’t recline well, or for long. Never have.
Where are you, where are you headed? You can’t hold a year in your hand or put a rope around one; it is a record keeping construct of humans – a way of capturing 365.25 X 24 hours it takes this spinning earth to orbit its star. We are nearing the end of our orbit, not the end of our rope.
Table trays up, seats straight – we’re landing soon in an exotic place where joys mingle with sorrows, where great sleeps and energetic tomorrows reside. We’ll ‘future’ there, in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow – a spectacular place in time none of us have been before.
Let us bravely go where no one has been before …
Reader feedback:
THE MAIN THING
Wow. Somebody is up late. ~ Oh. Pardon me. Perhaps I am the one that is up too late. :) You did ask "what are you doing?" In your piece, after all. Apparently I am writing, just like you but my day is about to end while yours is beginning. Have a blessed and prosperous day, SN, Surrey, BC
Moving a conversation forward – that next thing you’re going to say, what’s it for? Is it to advance the conversation, to get a client, to make them go away, to find intimacy, to share a truth, to ask for help, to offer help, to pass the time, to learn something, to teach something, to build trust? Talking about the weather is a stall. Stalling has a function, but it’s not the best we can do. Intention opens the door to forward motion, SG, New York, NY
ON MY WAY
Soooooooooooooooo, did you actually go to the gym AND workout?, AN, Calgary, AB
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