 |
| When History Was New |
 |
| American Ancients |
 |
| Westward Ho! |
 |
| Petroglyphs of the West |
Another Christmas is gone and forgotten. Another year begins, and with it comes a rehashing of last year’s accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned. How many inches of painful progress can I mark on my growth wall? What do I need to carry over into the new year, and what do I need to discard? Will my history repeat itself? I can answer that: yup. The days, weeks, months, and years are going by so fast that they stack up in disorderly chaos right about now, guaranteeing that I’ll never realize lessons learned until I jump off the merry-go-round and absorb experiences instead of plowing through them.
I’ve spent many holiday nights trying to remember when so and so went to the hospital, or went to jail, or got married, or had a heart attack, or broke one or more bones. Many of these gruesome flashbacks take over my dreams, and I wake up with choking bile and tears. There are memories of good times, and these flashbacks have me wondering about the date, year, location, and outcome rather than simply enjoying an accomplishment or blessing. I’ve felt down since November, lost in a maze of anxiety and confusion. History is supposedly written by the winners, and that’s what scares me.
It must be a happy accident that Matt Haig's The Life Impossible: A Novel was the
first book I finished reading in 2025. The main character, Grace, is a 70-something
retiree barely coping with past traumas who takes a giant leap out of her British
doldrums into a magical, mystery tour of Ibiza, Spain. I relate to Grace’s
fears and guilt which have caused her to sink into numbness and despondency. One
passage in the chapter, A Boat Called No,
reminds me of my perennial New Year’s resolution to lose weight, get fit, yadda
yadda...
“My simmering disquiet
about my own existence had always found its focus in my physical form. I had
spent a lifetime hating my appearance in the present and then appreciating it
in retrospect.”
Grace is forced to break out of the bleakness when a friend dies, leaving her with a house in Ibiza and a new beginning. The story continues with cranky Grace finding the comfort of math and mysticism while opening to the possibilities and opportunities of nature and the world. This is good stuff. The book presents a theory that living in a rut is a form of slow death, and it is better to take a leap into the terror and joy of an open mind and open road.
Time, or something like it, moves on and it takes effort to move with it. My goal is to be open to the wonder, energy, and light of life. Be alive. Be well. Be happy.
May all beings know love and peace throughout the new year🐝
