Wrapping up 2021, YEAR 2 of COVID 19, 4 Life Lessons

Well, it's been a year, unlike another for every single one of us 7.9 billion humans. We have all been in our own storms, in our own lifeboats. So what have I learned from this crisis? Truthfully, I am still learning from the flow, the loss, the slowing down, as well as the Xpansion, openings, ever-widening circle of good.  

There is so much more good in the world from this pandemic pause, or at least I am now noticing more of the good. In the peak of COVID recovery, I was texting in response to my brother who still has not recovered from his daughter's suicide on November 4, 2017. those nearly 20 texts daily were my service to life for my little brother to find his new way in life.  So for three-and-a-half years until this August, I was his only lifeline of constant support and sense of reality. I so wish that I could help him, but he finds no purpose other than looking for the person responsible for his daughter's death. So what have I learned? Pain can leak from our own psyche to others. Pain can be a drain on relationships. Not everyone wants to or is capable of letting go of pain. Even when pleasure is offered, pain can cloud the ability to receive pleasure.

I write this as I have my right foot elevated and iced. I am slowing down as a long-hauling COVID recoverer. So this is the perfect time for my body to heal. Hot-cold, hot-cold, hot-cold, like my feelings about the way humans treat our earthly home. I split my achilles tendon. I am gimping around trying to get the healing to turn my ankle from purple & green to a solid fleshy healthy skin tone. 

For a year in review, I'll share my cell phone with my family and choose best pics with favorite tunes to edit together an annual reflection and remembrance. From head injuries my memory so appreciates being able to see what I have done and with whom, since names vanish rapidly these days. 

OK, so now for the juicy life lessons accompanied with links to go deeper, go happier, go lighter:

1." If I am not feeling everything, I am missing everything." - Adelle (Watch her incredible concert at age 30 and interviewed by Oprah Winfrey:  https://www.cbs.com/shows/adele-one-night-only/video/BoW36T84lPNYyOfJv7a...)

2. Give your knowledge away as freely as possible to as many as possible for as long as possible. (@LIVING BRIGHTLY2 I'll activate youth to take personal action so that climate angst, depression, confusion, and helplessness are disproven by their own micro wins. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/living-brightly2-tickets-168152016207 )

3. Make fun out of the overwhelm. I assemble joyful playlists while noticing how deadly are the consequences of climate breakdowns now. This one on Spotify for those who have just listened to a visualization I will have done on designing the flow of the River of their lives. Then they will draw their own river while they listen to this playlist called River. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1xlRYCjlIj8nixVc66uQKS?si=5df2fdc4a443...

4. Slow down, read poetry, rest. I commend Robert Frost to you.

West-Running Brook

‘Fred, where is north?’

‘North? North is there, my love.

The brook runs west.’

‘West-running Brook then call it.’

(West-Running Brook men call it to this day.)

‘What does it think it’s doing running west

When all the other country brooks flow east

To reach the ocean? It must be the brook

Can trust itself to go by contraries

The way I can with you — and you with me —

Because we’re — we’re — I don’t know what we are.

What are we?’

“Young or new?

“We must be something.

We’ve said we two. Let’s change that to we three.

As you and I are married to each other,

We’ll both be married to the brook. We’ll build

Our bridge across it, and the bridge shall be

Our arm thrown over it asleep beside it.

Look, look, it’s waving to us with a wave

To let us know it hears me. ”

“Why, my dear,

That wave’s been standing off this jut of shore –”

(The black stream, catching a sunken rock,

Flung backward on itself in one white wave,

And the white water rode the black forever,

Not gaining but not losing, like a bird

White feathers from the struggle of whose breast

Flecked the dark stream and flecked the darker pool

Below the point, and were at last driven wrinkled

In a white scarf against the far shore alders.)

“That wave’s been standing off this jut of shore

Ever since rivers, I was going to say,’

Were made in heaven. It wasn’t waved to us. ”

“It wasn’t, yet it was. If not to you

It was to me — in an annunciation. ”

“Oh, if you take it off to lady-land,

As’t were the country of the Amazons

We men must see you to the confines of

And leave you there, ourselves forbid to enter,-

It is your brook! I have no more to say. ”

“Yes, you have, too. Go on. You thought of something. ”

“Speaking of contraries, see how the brook

In that white wave runs counter to itself.

It is from that in water we were from

Long, long before we were from any creature.

Here we, in our impatience of the steps,

Get back to the beginning of beginnings,

The stream of everything that runs away.

Some say existence like a Pirouot

And Pirouette, forever in one place,

Stands still and dances, but it runs away,

It seriously, sadly, runs away

To fill the abyss’ void with emptiness.

It flows beside us in this water brook,

But it flows over us. It flows between us

To separate us for a panic moment.

It flows between us, over us, and with us.

And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love-

And even substance lapsing unsubstantial;

The universal cataract of death

That spends to nothingness — and unresisted,

Save by some strange resistance in itself,

Not just a swerving, but a throwing back,

As if regret were in it and were sacred.

It has this throwing backward on itself

So that the fall of most of it is always

Raising a little, sending up a little.

Our life runs down in sending up the clock.

The brook runs down in sending up our life.

The sun runs down in sending up the brook.

And there is something sending up the sun.

It is this backward motion toward the source,

Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,

The tribute of the current to the source.

It is from this in nature we are from.

It is most us. ”

“To-day will be the day….You said so. ”

“No, to-day will be the day

You said the brook was called West-running Brook. ”

“To-day will be the day of what we both said.”

 

May 2022 flow for you like a gorgeous life-giving RIVER.

https://vimeo.com/143442185