For many this has been a summer of European vacations and blockbuster movies. It almost feels like old times have returned and yet nothing is really the same as it was back in the days of my youth or young adulthood. They are not the same as when my father-in-law was still a teenager on the day that I was born. Just as my grandfather always opined, life moves forward and changes just as it should. Still I have spent much of this summer looking back at my own story, remembering the people and events that most impacted me, reading books that track our shared world history.
My tiny world is a microcosm of the global world , the story of humanity. Taken together our human journeys have all been leading to this moment in time. Our stories have been told in small gatherings with friends and family. They are the oral histories that reveal our innermost feelings. We hear the story of humanity in poetry that sometimes combines words and thoughts in the most succinctly profound ways. A musician picks up a guitar and begins to hum a melody and that coexists with words about who we humans are and how we think that are powerfully moving. A novelist, historian or biographer delves into the deepest human thoughts and actions that tilt the planet in conflicting directions. So it is with storytellers, those who feel a cosmic force pushing them to tell stories that explain who we are, why we are, who we hope to become. Words, music and artistry are the real ways that we are different from all the other creatures with whom we inhabit this earth.
Writing about the first half of my life has been therapy for me. It has been a way of taking the disparate pieces of my history and putting them together in a kind of coherence that did not seem to exist when they were actually happening. Back then I only reacted. Today I am able to analyze the meaning and progression of my personal journey. I can see how the hardships and mistakes were as important in making me who I am today as the fun times and successes were. I can see that in the long stretch of history I am but a single link in my ancestry, but a necessary one as all of us of us are. There is an importance attached to every life, a purpose for our being.
When things happen to us we are forced to react. How we choose to do so is often determined by our circumstances, our support systems or lack of them. None of us live in a vacuum. Each of us is influenced from birth by where we happen to live, how our parents have treated us, how safe or dangerous our environment is. Through nothing other than good fortune I realize that I have always been surrounded by wonderful people whose guidance and love helped me to seem strong and wonderful.
Each of us is who we are because of millions of interactions with our environment. We never know who will impact us, who will change us for better or worse. We wake up each morning hoping that our day will be easy and pleasant, but deep inside we are on alert, knowing that the reality of life is often uncertain. The only thing we can control is how we will react, and sometimes our challenges and tragedies are so enormous that we cannot stay in command. We lose our composure and our ability to be rational, a perfectly normal thing to do.
As I have looked at my story I have also spent much of the summer analyzing the world. It is an enormous task for sure because the truth is that there is no one best way of doing things. To believe that we should force our ideals and philosophies on others is absurd and the foundation of much of the rancor in history. It is instead through example that we are most likely to influence. People the world over respond to kindness and concern. Most individuals just want someone to take the time to hear and understand them rather than judging or condemning them. Evil is created. We are not born with it. Those of us who are lucky encounter little of it and so we learn to be good.
I have been influenced by the generosity that has been extended to me over and over again. I have also learned how not to be by encounters with broken souls. In their own ways they demonstrated how evil is formed in our midst. I learned to avoid the traits that I witnessed in them just as truly as I was inspired by the good people who came my way. By the time I was entering my forties I had developed a sense of who I was and how I wanted my life to unfold even as I had come to realize that we can’t always get what we want. I knew that uncertainty lay ahead but I had faith in my ability to face coming challenges head on. I could not know what those would be but I knew that somehow I had already overcome many hard times. I have the skills to survive the storms.
The days from the late nineteen eighties to the present seemed to flash by far more quickly than the earlier part of my life. My whole family was busy with the work of family, friendships and jobs. We hardly had time to breathe in between our obligations but there would be the kind of interruptions that would force us to take stock of our lives once again, to change course to meet the new realities. I suppose that makes me about average in the grand scheme of things, more fortunate in where I had been born, who my parents had been, the catalog of extended family members and friends, and within my own small circle of husband and daughters. I know that I was simply lucky and for that I am thankful, but never boastful. But for circumstance my story may have been so different.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 