PASSAGES

The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.

Norman Cousins

A Facebook friend posted this quote and it made me think! Oh, good heavens, not that! It did.

I had a conversation with my hairdresser, Deb, the other day. We were talking about the inescapable passage of time, of moving into the next decade, allowing space for new generations, dealing with all the issues, physical and mental, that moving on delivers whether we want them or not. Any mature woman or man knows exactly what I mean. I need not launch into specifics.

I do need to be clear about this, however. I don’t give a damn how old a person is, how old I am; it simply does not make sense to stop living all on your own. Why in God’s Earth would someone do that? I lost a son in May 2013 and rest assured, it was not a choice, not for him, and certainly not for me. He wanted to live and I would give anything to have him here with me now. Brain cancer doesn’t bargain well, though. The point of my blog is not to dwell on that very sad part of life however, but rather to point to the fact that the human spirit (and my son would applaud this) has the capacity, even in the face of illness, even in the face of aging, even in the face of uncertainty, to keep moving forward.

I have retired from teaching, and thus relinquished the opportunity to interact with quite a few incredible individuals on a daily basis, but without much of a second thought I have moved on to something new. Every day I want to create something new – a new blog, a new story, a new poem, a new friend, a new discovery, a new reason to laugh, a new reason to live. I refuse to let what burns inside of me die, not before my time. 

I know a few folks who are struggling to find a reason to be here and how tragic is that? If I had the power I would jump-start them into a new reason, into a new season for keeping on keeping on. If any one of them were to read this, perhaps it would help. Maybe. Yet then, maybe it wouldn’t. It’s a choice, but I’d like to shake some sense into a couple of people I know! “Just sayin’,” and how trite is that trendy statement? It doesn’t matter. It’s just what’s so, at least for me.