woah: 2013

Woah: 2013

Dancing

Adventure

Goodbyes

Hellos

Bravery

Risk

Overrated

Falling in love

Cluster of engagements

Changes

Lots of changes

Greatest lesson learned: Roll with the punches.

Greatest  discovery: How much I am still changing

 

The word change keeps rolling and sliding through my mind. My hate of it, need of it and utter thankfulness for it. This line from Downton Abbey keeps replying through my head, when Matthew Crawley says “I was so determined not to let these circumstances change me, that I forgot that things must change. When we stop changing, we die.”

My reflecting is slow…and delicate. Reminding myself to constantly be tender and kind to myself. Tip toeing across the quiet pain and basking in the overwhelming joy that this year brought. Reminding myself to read all the lines with thoughtful thankfulness. So much subtle changes over a year. Slowly but surely. I don’t have a conclusion to come to for the end of 2013 except that I know endings mean beginnings. Just when I think my changes are over, they are not. That’s something to look forward to.

I am excited to embrace the new year. Cheers to 2014!

Heres a poem. I didn’t write it, but I really love it a lot.

 

The Layers

By  Stanley Kunitz  

 

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels 

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.