Ending/Beginning

So, the end of 2022 is here, and we all look toward 2023 as though it will somehow, miraculously be better or different or only wonderful things will happen and all the stress and strife of the past two or three years will drop off never to be seen again.

Wow, that was a long sentence and one that kind of takes your breath away. I have been pondering our human need to have an ending and a hope for a new beginning. In my experience most years have a mixture of good/bad, happy/sad, hard/easy. Some years are more fun than others and some are harder, but on the whole, they seem to even out.

2022 was a year that called me to be more than I had ever been. To kick up my caretaker role so that I could make sure that my husband was safe, happy, loved and looked after. My realization that I simply put my head down and kept plowing forward mostly occurred after he died, but there were a few times during it all that felt as though I was drowning or barely keeping my head above water. I felt inadequate and not enough and yet the input from those watching it was far more supportive than I could allow myself. At one point I said to him, “I don’t know what to do for you. I feel so inadequate.” He sat quietly for a few moments, turned, and looked at a painting on the wall and turned back to me and said, “Please never feel that way again. It is all fine.”

He was a gentle man and gentleman. One of his greatest strengths was he never attached to other people’s behaviors or beliefs. He was enough unto himself. It was not that he judged himself to be perfect or superior, but rather was clever enough to know that the only person in life you control is yourself and you do not have to prove yourself to anyone.  He took everyone at face value, and he assumed the same of them.

So, as we wander into another number, take a piece of advice from him – worry about yourself not others and take everyone as they come. Oh, and remember to have child-like wonder every day.

See you next year.