Hgofoyfyxjvbigiydjycjhuxutcmhvl
Regardless of age or station in life, once the consciousness of life itself begins, it seems to me there must be adversity. Maybe this is just me, just something I require, and there are fortunate souls out there who don’t or don’t define life’s challenges in that way. I can’t imagine being quite that relaxed, and I find myself both hopeful that they exist (I tend to think pretty much every sort of person must exist, really) and just a little inclined to fall back into my generalization for comfort’s sake. But I suppose if I’m going to think there is one of everything, it’s not such a stretch to think there are two, so I can be generous and still keep my company. 🙃😂 I was just looking back through my years is all (a view I consider to be one of the gifts of half a century plus), and all the adversity that walked by my side. Some of it, from these particular eyes of experience, I would still call “real.” Those things I learned the most from, that changed me the most and more often for the better. Helped me grow into something more thoughtful and appreciative. Some of it, I would call “manufactured” from these lofty heights. The struggles of a narrow existence and the narrow mind that went with it. I was insulated and insular, and when life wasn’t spoonfeeding me the fertilizer for the humanity I was lacking, I created my own generic struggles. Less potent, naturally, but they kept the momentum going, I think. Kept the necessary pain, the necessary thinking rolling in the direction that would take me outside of myself. I see that more now because I do it less. I no longer just feel that knee-jerk reaction and run with it. I pick it up and turn it over and over and peer into every nook and cranny and find that far more often than not, it diminishes and disappears in my hands. There are lots of things surrounding me as I sit here which I love in that way we love things. I would feel sorrow at the loss of them, so I feel gratitude that I haven’t lost them yet. My parents are out there watching Ridiculousness on MTV which they seem to have an inexplicable addiction to, and I haven’t lost them yet so I am grateful (less so for that show 😂). They laugh, though they have lost many of their own things, and I find comfort in that. My husband, who has been the largest dose of adversity in my life, uniquely both manufactured and real I would say, is wandering around here somewhere, and I know he’s going to hurt my feelings today as he does every day. Life with him is painful for me. But he also made my coffee this morning and will do a dozen other things today to make my life easier and funnier. And he let me sit in here in the quiet with my coffee with not a single complaint. I am grateful for him, and for the adversity he will always bring to my life. I understand that I need it so I don’t stop looking and thinking and understanding and becoming. He both grows and shelters me. I’ve just seen a lot of loss this year, a lot of adversity, mine and others. I’ve seen it handled a lot of different ways. Dealt with and used and taken advantage of. It makes me think of the sky and how everything under it comes and goes. I sit here with all my loves and grateful for those loves, knowing that I and they will pass out of existence and memory. There is pain, but it is brief under that sky. And that sky is really, really beautiful. I think the adversity is just life’s way of trying to make sure we don’t miss that.
