Penultimate Day
The approach to the new year has slowed a bit. It’s still two days away, and while I know I’m going to reassess my budget next year that’s about the only thing I know for sure. Today feels like a big pause, that moment before you bounce on the end of the diving board and spring off into what’s waiting. Mostly, what’s waiting for me is nothing. The year stretches out in front of me like a blank canvas. There are some colors I’d like to paint, some things I’d like to do, and some things I’ll have to do, but overall, who knows what will happen.
It's a strange feeling for sure. There’s certainly nothing I dread, and dread was a large part of my life over the last several years. Dreading the next stage of my late wife’s dementia, dreading the next stage of her care, dreading the end, dreading the aftermath, dreading the holidays. You name it. There were things that gave me pause. But now it seems as though I’m at peace with what is. The earthquake of her death has quit shaking. The volcano of my grief has quit erupting. I’m ready to live in the new landscape of my life and let the wind and rain, laughter and tears, bring sun and water to the valleys, bring low the tall mountains, shape my life as it will.
I’ll walk trails, sing songs, write, visit my children, visit my friends, look at the sky, look at the ground. I’ll take each day as a gift and know for sure I am responsible for my happiness, and when I choose it then I shall have it, And in whatever measure it decides to come, I will make the best of whatever comes. Something in me wants to quote Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher. Flinging around quotes, however, has never been my thing. Suffice it to say, I like Epictetus and the Stoics and wish I had a quote or two. So, let’s just go with the worldview that there’s very little in life actually under our control, so why worry, but that’s a paraphrase of Alfred E. Neuman, a philosopher of a different type. And this is getting away from me and it’s time to stop.