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2022 has seen a good many up's and down's. We've lost some pretty amazing actors, actresses, singers, composers, friends, and family. We've seen uncertainties and unrest carried over from the Covid scare. We've had many achievements in the fields of industry after the pandemic lockdowns. We have gone even further into the cosmos and seen new sights that were not meant for our undeveloped mortal eyes. We have seen war, patriotisms, extremism, and a reemergence of a drowsy hatred revitalized by political platforms. We stand now as a nation of divided freedoms, ideals, and self appointed importance's. We find ourselves creeping headlong into a future where a divided dream is hoped for excited outcome. But we lack the knowledge that a fractured dream is nothing more than a pretty nightmare. Power for the sake of holding others at bay, will never allow for advancements. It isn't until we correct our vision, that we can see the true commonality that binds, and holds us all together. Sure we may differ from person to person. But the common thread that binds us all and weaves us into the tapestry of life are spun from the same fiber. There is a blurring of the spiritual and the political which makes for a powder keg of troubles. Those claiming that the nation should be one of faith, and those claiming that it should be of politics, and still those who believe that divinity and political should stay separate. Those who looked back upon the pages of history and saw the fatal footsteps lead by the past regimes and seeing that those boots worn by the people of present are falling instep with systems that proved to not work.
Its also been a retrospective period of time. I have often caught myself looking in the rear view mirror more than I probably should this last year. Wondering about the what if's and the maybes. Wondering what would have happened if I had taken that proverbial "left turn at Albuquerque." I have also found myself wondering at the outcome of me never having left my home state. What my life, such as it was at the time, would have been like now in the last days of 2022. And further still, what would have happened if I had not thought that I had fallen in love, and quit schooling. Would I be the English teacher my father so wanted me to be? Would I have some how still messed that all up? What if I had not dropped out of the Med Tech schooling? Would I now be the Phlebotomist that I had trained to be, after my feeble attempt at returning to college? Would I be working some dead end retail job? Where would my mental health be in all of this? Would I still be masking myself and my true feelings to prove that I was "ok"?
There are a lot of things that have come up over this past year that has really caused a pause and a good hard look at those pathways and bridges that are no longer accessible to me, either through timing or through them being shut to me forever. I guess that is why they say "in hindsight"? But that is also the folly of youth isn't it? To think that tomorrow has so many possibilities, not realizing that when tomorrow is today, a quarter of a decade passed.
The romance of youth is the dream that you can do anything that you set your mind to. The reality is that sometimes those dreams are forgotten by trying to live life. But all we can do is our best with the time that we still have. I use to think on the phrase "tomorrow isn't promised" with ignorance. I now know the importance of those words. My young ears, and developing mind, didn't understand them then.
The aspect of ones own mortality is never a conversation one likes to have with oneself. The idea that within the blink of an eye, everything that makes you, well you, can be snuffed out by some supernatural force. Whatever miracle that created life, can suddenly stop it. Be it divine intervention, cosmic coincidence or some yet unknow scientific biological time clock that says 41 years, 2 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days is enough time for the energy that inhabits my body or soul That as quickly as my life sparked into action, it goes away just as fast. Leaving behind the shell of what and who I once was.
Somber to say the least. But it is with happiness that I take these next steps into yet another new year. A linear march forward by mortal constructs. The idea of resetting the clock, and starting all over with a whole new year. A blank canvas of possibilities. Of fresh starts, and new adventures. The tossing aside of compass's and maps. To blaze a hopeful new trail for ones life. And the secret hope in some higher power, that you are granted the strength, fortitude, and stamina to see out these changes, the new paths, and what is to come around the corner, and over each new horizon, as the sun, moon, and rain falls, sets and rises on the just and unjust alike.
