Thank you to Kat from I Saw You Dancing and her friend Bron aka Maxabella for the Reverb 12 prompt:
My question is: what was the most important thing
you learned in 2012?
I would like to add: how does this learning shape the path going forward?
I was blessed to visit Walden Pond in October 2011. This is one of the photos I took.
I’m having a bit of a challenge coming up with the single most important thing I learned.
It is more like “single most important thing I now understand and live better than I did in 2011.”
I was reminded life happens.
It is filled with surprises, some ordinarily wondrous – like a poetry performance with drums where I had a transcendent moment and the unexpected couchsurfing guest who turned out to be beyond words incredibly good to host.
Then there are some that are not so great: the melanoma, for example. Samuel suddenly not liking his afterschool program so much that he has missed days at a time. My surgery recovery issues pop up.
I also was reminded not to tax myself when I am the most vulnerable.
Always take a breath before responding and remember that ever helpful question, “What’s up with that?” instead of personalizing everything.
Life is filled with surprises.
Going forward, I welcome them, like my other friend, Rumi once wrote:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
I am grateful for it all, especially as I review this
crooked path I have taken and will now live out
Rumi’s poem and Henry David
Thoreau’s quote on the photo above. It might be crooked, unruly and sometimes I may look like a
swashbuckler, but I will enjoy – or at least learn from - whatever the ride
brings.
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