Mainly – and I don’t say this lightly – most days I feel like I have a pretty awesome life of my own choosing.
I fill my days with – for the most part – doing what I want to do when I want to do it.
But there are days when I’m beyond frustrated by technology, sooooo tired of sweeping my front porch, deleting an endless amount of advertising e mails, dealing with ever increasing doctors appointments and the tedium of paying bills, paying taxes and simply paying attention to the upheavals worldwide.
And some days I’m just downright lonely – wishing my nest wasn’t empty and I was still the hub of the family wheel rather than now when I’m just one of the spokes.
I was deeply comforted recently when I read a newspaper story on happiness and in it the author offered some tantalizing observations.
She made the point that her family, her job and her marriage are all on track, noting that those three things are the main sources of meaning for her. She concluded she was pretty happy.
But she also noted a happy life can be made up of hard circumstances also:
One kid has a virus.
Two are chronically late turning in homework.
She’s behind on multiple work assignments, making her irritable as hell.
Her husband is on the verge of coming down with a killer sinus headache.
Oh, yes, and she’s very worried about her relatives in the Ukraine.
Epiphany!
I too love my life, but not all the moments in it.
That’s why it’s a wise person who can seize a moment of pure happiness amidst the continued chaos and aggravations of life.
That’s what I did yesterday when I flew back to Ohio, met four of my sons and three of my grandkids in my hometown of Cincinnati for the most fun tradition ever: OPENING DAY for the Cincinnati Reds!
But intermixed between the hugging hellos, the excited settling in our seats, the incessant cheering and the wolfing down of Skyline Chili – twinges of sadness washed over me for what used to be and is no more.
Then:
My five children living at home with my husband and me in our comfortable two-story colonial in a suburb of Cincinnati
My parents and my in-laws just minutes away in their own homes
Now:
My five children have all settled elsewhere.
We sold our family home 18 years ago and moved away too.
And both sets of parents remain forever in our hometown – in adjacent cemeteries in an old part of the city.
As Williams Wordsworth so eloquently put it over 200 years ago, “though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass and glory in the flower, we will grieve not but rather find, strength in what remains behind.”
I have a lot of good stuff remaining behind. I’m glad I’m able to draw upon it and amidst life’s inevitable losses, still find the joy.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
