Whether we are a tortoise or a hare, the journey can be better if we travel together.
Simplistic, yes I know, but true in most cases when the parties are willing to embrace each other’s weaknesses as well as each other’s strengths.
Choosing our companions wisely is certainly key to success. Also key to success is recognizing our traveling companion today may not be our companion for the entire journey.
Seldom is the journey, or life, a smooth, straight path. Even when we know where we want to go, and have a map to guide us, we will encounter obstacles that may cause us to detour seeking an uncharted way to our destination.
Having trusted companions can help us navigate the detours; and if we should get lost, those companions will prevent us from feeling the despair of solitude.
Change is unavoidable and sometimes very painful. It can also open us to opportunities we may otherwise never have seen had the change not occurred. However change, especially when it is a mighty life change, can bring on a sense of loss, even a sense of mourning for that which we had or for whom we were before the change occurred.
Mourning a loss is never an easy process, and it is seldom a speedy one. Permitting oneself the time and space to mourn is not merely important, it is vital.
Simple steps each day can help us through both the change and the loss we might feel because of the change, but sometimes even simple steps can feel overwhelming.
Sometimes we need the quiet that solitude provides us. Sometimes we need space – the space to process, to mourn, and to adjust. Other times we need companionship.
While no one can adjust, heal, or live for us, many can give us a helpful hand.
One of life’s greatest lessons is learning how to move each day – physically and mentally move each and every day. When we stop moving, we stop life.
Sometimes, no matter how strong willed we are, we need help moving. Just like when we seek physical therapy after an injury or severe illness has made our body struggle, we may need to seek help when it is our mental or spiritual health that is struggling. Seeking help and acquiring help may also require us to experience more change, but this change might be one of the most valuable aids to helping us through the bigger life change which is causing us so much struggle.
We must find a way to keep on keeping on. To keep on living, and to keep on looking for those opportunities that now might be more clearly seen because of a mighty life change.
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I will vlog again, and probably sooner than later. This is just breathing time.
What do we seek on this journey or from this experience? Taking time to ask this question of ourselves affords us the opportunity to understand the answer despite any excitement or anxiety we might feel.
Do we hope to learn something? Connect with someone? Are we planning to challenge ourselves, or are we simply hoping to embrace the joy of the experience? Maybe there is a bit of all of this in our plans. However, it is not just the meandering, spur-of-the-moment journey that includes unforeseen excitement or anxiety. We can become frustrated or even lose our way if we have not taken the time to understand what we are seeking.
Origins of This Thought
When this thought first began swirling around my head, I was contemplating the way personal relationships can devolve. A brief conversation with a stranger had left me troubled. The stranger had conveyed how difficult they were struggling now that they were the guardian of their young grandchild. Their struggle was one of lost hope, as much as one of real challenge. Their expectations of this new, full-time relationship was fraught with the dread of knowing life was going to be forever changed, and was going to be quite difficult due to the child’s very specific struggles.
I was troubled by the lack of hope the stranger shared. Many hours later, this thought came to mind.
What do we seek in our personal relationships? What do we hope to learn or experience?
While we may not be able to change the specific elements of human existence that make life hard, sometimes so hard we struggle to see a way forward, we are able to reimagine our expectations. Sometimes this can be achieved by simply identifying what it is we truly seek from the situation or the relationship. Often we are counseled to changed our perspective, but first we might be wise in understanding what it is we seek. From that understanding, our perspective, or in other words, our vantage point might become clear. We might even discover that our frustration is not from the challenges we face in this new journey, but simply from having become lost in the fog before reaching the summit.
We’ve all heard the saying “when life’s hands you lemons…” In the world of making yarn, the result of this can-do attitude often results in unique creations. In the case of this particular yarn, a bobbin of “oops” was combined with some left-over “forgot what it was” which produced a “crazily energetic yarn”. Not to be discouraged, I then added some “I think I know what it is” into the mix. The resulting yarn is unique, but it is also quite functional.
Oops Yarn is also a reminder to embrace the mistakes in life’s journey. If we need a good cry, then we should cry. If we need a good laugh, then we should laugh. The thing we shouldn’t do is throw out the mistake or pretend it didn’t happen. Life is full of mistakes, but like the Oops Yarn, there is value to be had if we embrace them rather than toss them away.
In my latest vlog, you can hear all about my Oops Yarn as well as some projects that went as planned.
Your identity and worth do not hinge on your service to others or the work you do. Your service and work are the reflection of your identity and your worth.
The wise speak and quote truth, often universal truth that transcends time or has evolved due to time.
The manipulative misquotes, takes soundbites out of context, and re-writes the words of the wise for the purpose of self-interest.
Those seeking to become wise will spend time evaluating a source for its honesty, clarity, and truth. Those seeking to be led will simply believe that which confirms their desired state of being whether it is truth or falsehood.
Both will believe they have found truth, but only one will know that they have.
As we age, or even just as we get too busy with out lives, there are so many things we forget. There are things we wish we could forget which cling to us with a force that seems unbreakable. Then there are those wonderful things we hope to never forget.
This morning I awoke thinking of something I hope to always remember – a smile. This wasn’t any ordinary smile because the woman of whom the the smile belongs has never been ordinary. When I knew her in person, she was extraordinary; I suspect she still is.
I haven’t seen her in person in nearly 30 years, yet I can still see her smile and hear her laugh as if it was just yesterday we last were together. With the marvels of modern technology, I have seen photos that prove her smile and her exuberance has not diminished over the years. From those photos, it is clear that her family is well accustomed to her smile and laughter.
I don’t know why it was her smile that I saw when I dreamt my last dream of the night. It had been a rough night with unpleasant dreams that I am more that happy to have fade from memory. Upon seeing my friend smile in my dream, I awoke and the unpleasant memories, best forgotten, faded away, replaced by the joy I felt upon seeing her smile.
After months of relative absence here and complete absence on my other blog, a new post has emerged from the rubble of a very contentious and damaging election cycle.
Pithy Ponderings 