All reminders of how my life has changed. Childhood photographs that make me laugh and at the same time cringe in horror. Shoeboxes filled with letters from people I no longer know. Pictures of long-ago family vacations, Christmases past, recitals, and school plays. While I am deeply convinced that I’m living out God’s best for me, there are days I mourn the loss of what used to be - particularly recently as I’ve been going through old tubs, each one filled with memories of a life that no longer exists. Thumbing through my mementos, I am reminded again that the life I’m living now isn’t what I signed up for. As I open each crate, I vividly remember the way life used to be - the hobbies I used to love, the things I used to do. Embrace yourself.Cleaning out boxes from the attic has left me more unsettled and emotional than I ever anticipated. There is so much more to love, to create and to give. And it takes love and respect for life to fulfil it, to create of it what was meant to be for you. It fills you with a sense of gratitude, inner peace, hope, and at the same time with the excitement for life. Being open to start the new, with embracing of what was and what brought you to here and now, and without knowing what it will bring. Being aware of the difference between one and the other, and what changed (you) in between. “To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is the biggest knowledge of all.” This thought from Lao Tzu seems appropriate for concluding one cycle, and beginning a new one. I found myself observing how years are creating and reflecting a flow of my life, how my life is unfolding each year, and how I evolve in it/into it. I am more and more realising how experiences, relationships, and lessons are connected, or at least some connections start to indicate the meaning behind.
I could not possibly knew this in advance, before living it all through. Looking back at last five years of my life, or just one – this now ending year, it amazes me how much has happened, how much has changed, how much I have learned, and how much I have created. With all ‘why-s’, ‘what-s’ and ‘how-s’ within, and in between.
Moment by moment, with people on our path, coming and going, some staying and we grow together, and with some we continue separate ways. With years, it seems more and more precious, and in a way sacred and graceful, to me, this life of mine, our lives, how we live our lives, what we create and how we contribute. There is one insight and thought that stayed with me since that day, and keeps coming to my mind especially at this time of a year, – that there is such grace and humbleness for the sacredness of life present at the moment when one life, and its purpose here on earth is fulfilled, and that you just can not demand of life to give you or be more, or less, as it is. Or better say, I was able to integrate and embrace all of it, during what and whom life brought to me in these years. Looking back at these 5 years, it could be that I have learned during these years even more from my dad and what he was teaching me with his life/way of living, as I have during his lifetime here.
That day was one of those days that make life shifts, that change everyone affected, that mark the difference between before and after. Tomorrow will be already 5 years since my dad passed away.
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