Tag: Reflection

Looking forward to January from this, the finish of the old year and the start of the new, I record the passing of yet another ending and another beginning. 

For so many years I have tried to understand why each new year seems designed to defeat me. Each came with so much potential and promise, but within a few short months ended in frustration and disappointment. I am beginning to suspect I am the problem: A square lid on a round cookie can. 

Still, there is something about this year that I seem to perceive differently. I have always assumed each year was a one-off, single shot in the dark, like the annual, yearend entry. Suddenly, I now see that each is always followed by another shot, another entry, another year. There is a synchronization, a discernible flow carried from one year to the next. What has also appeared this time is the realization that each year is linked to the others, and has been since my birth. Each has been piled upon an ever increasing stack of years, with the newest on top. As I turn around, standing on the cusp of the latest year, I imagine that from here I have the perfect attitude, the best opinion on how things work in life or even the latest and most complete point of view. However, the point on which I have derived all of this, as noted, is not very stationary. How can it be? It changes every year and it keeps moving like a small raft on a swiftly moving river. The whole of it, with me at the apex, flows through ever changing circumstances, experiences and scenery. 

Those new year starts, which lasted only 3 or so months, now look like I was drifting into backwaters where I got temporarily slowed down for a bit. While each backwater held new and tempting things, I rested there only so long as there were more experiences to ingest. Then, just as certain, the time would arrive when a higher flow of water would flush me out into the main current again to be moved on. Even now at the thresh hold of this New Year, I can already feel the irresistible pull of the current. 

What guides the tides of time and the affairs of men? How is it that now that I am aware of it, I do not feel the least bit inclined to try to rearrange or change the speed or direction of the current?

My journey is becoming the center of my interest and attention as I ponder the unanswered questions it presents to me.

1/ I must have started somewhere, at some time. Did I have any choice regarding the destination or duration? Or were they chosen for me? 

2/ How will the journey end? 

3/ Does my life or its end really matter to anyone besides myself? 

4/ What does” eternal time” mean when there is so much meaning to understand in just one day? 

5/ Everything I must once have known, is all forgotten now. Why is that so? 

6/ Everything I see, smell, touch or learn today becomes woven deep, deep into the innermost fabric of my soul. Why weren’t those things I once knew, woven in as well? 

7/ If time began, and I began, and my journey began, then surely there has to be an end to everything as well. When it is all over? What then? 

8/ Will there be another “ shot in the dark” like this one, followed by another and still another? I now begin to understand the gift of my years. I feel, more than hear, the perplexing answers in the wind. They start quietly in my mind, assuring me as long as I am willing to move forward, I will find a river waiting — with a current over which I will be permitted to travel. 

9/ How much is there yet to see, to hear, to learn? 

10/ Does any of it depend on me?  My choice? 

11/ Who keeps track of all the journeys like mine?

12/ Is there an ever-watching eye somewhere that records it all?

13/ Where might that seer sit? In the Holy Halls of some Grand Palace in a land beyond where I can now see? 

14/ Is there carved in the stone of that great vaulted Hall, a message written by a ghostly finger that makes my course unalterable.  “Whosesoever yearns and would dare to desire to travel where the Gods have gone before them, must first learn what they have learned, and do what they have done. To these will be granted the space, the time, the opportunity required, that they may do so.”

15/ Will we ever have answers to these questions?

16/ Could it be that endings are only for who reject new beginnings? 

17/ Are the opportunities of the new beginnings influence by our previous journeys?

18/ From the height of our years, piled one upon the other, we perch to get our points of view, our opinions and our attitudes which then determine everything we do. Is this the never-changing pattern of all our progression? 

The memory is vague, the vision dark and distant. My hands tremble upon the oars at the very hope of such a thought. It is enough to stir a longing in my soul. “Come, my hesitant arms. We cannot rest or sleep yet. The current beckons and we must follow. The way is not well marked or brightly lit, but we must finish.” 

What manner the finish shall be, has not been reveal to me.

What reward of greatness we will receive at the finish, I cannot remember  — if I was ever told.

Who I will have become in the process, I cannot imagine. I have already changed so much.

This however, I do know. I will give all I possess to finish, and perhaps, to remember. Sufficient to itself, in the meantime, is to know I have moved far, oh so far. Yet all the while, so infinitely closer.

– Doug Garrett