2020 — Goodbye!
Come Celebrate with me….!
2020 — as we end this year, I feel it necessary to say thank you. We have been challenged in ways different from any other time in our life. Personally, I have been forced to reflect on my professional career, re-examine each and every choice, every turn of events, every success, and all my failures. As I continue to be challenged, reassessing my new position, I work to put my condition in its proper context. To remind myself that many others, many, many, others, are suffering more than I. I have always lived with the knowledge, that while at times I have had to struggle, I am privileged. I see the faces and remember the names of individuals, some who I have called and can still call “friend” — friends who will never reach their potential simply because of their place of birth, color of their skin, or lack of opportunity. People, good, good people, who have died without fully knowing the greatness this world holds, realizing that at times I may have not seen and felt this wonder but for their kindness.
Still, each of our situations is not without its own misery. To reflect on one’s life is a perilous endeavor at best. To review the opportunities lost to misdirection, selfishness, or simply uninformed judgement, is a tragic exercise in regret. Moreover, to know you may never have the occasion to use this knowledge gained through disaster, to build again with worn out tools, to pay forward the kindness so many offered you. This is the focus of our grief.
We will survive; kindness is all around us, and while in our thoughts we sit alone, we know we are not alone. But at the end of any journey there is sadness, sorrow born of having to let go. Yes, and fear. For no one knows what comes next. But there is also hope. Hope, like magic appears in most unexpected places. In the smiles of family, being together, sharing the small moments, a cold breeze carrying the expectation of changing seasons and new adventures. Hope lives in the sound of a friendly voice, a quick reply — written between the rush of one’s own daily struggle to stay a step ahead, and in the memory of times spent together, in better times with a different future in view. It is for these we should say thank you. “Being there” is nothing, unless it is acknowledged so let us acknowledge each other — let us thank each other. And in the words of Lucille Clifton, let us join together and “Come celebrate with me, that every day, something has tried to kill me, and has failed.”
