15 December 2016

15 December 2016 These lovely, hot days rounded off with the most beautiful sunsets as the year starts its slow close while the festive season demands the leg-work that will ensure the success of gatherings to celebrate, commemorate and illuminate a sense of togetherness, community and belonging. It also means making sure to reach out to those we've not seen as often as we'd like, recharging old connections, affirming standing links and evaluating any new involvements that the past year have effected in our lives. The nature of this time brings with it a sense of gratitude for those who have made positive inroads into our lives, enriching our existence with their humanity and making this journey a little easier, a shared learning, a hope-filled venture towards meaning. It also though throws into stark relief the events and people that highlighted the darker, more negative aspects of the human experience - the ones whose better depends on making it worse for others, huddling in their self-involvement, their agenda their own enrichment while claiming it to be for the common good. I was wondering why in particular my year would have to be darkened by two people specifically who expressed some of the more baser aspects of modern living - disloyalty, a lack of morality, a disregard for what is right and proper. One behaving like a common thief, the other a convoluted conman. Going back on their word, spreading lies and misinformation, making themselves guilty of abuse. And I was reminded that I should feel gratitude even for knowing them - because sometimes that's just how life works, that we don't get to choose who is used to teach us what we need to know. And that it's not the angry response at being done wrong that is required, but through empathy understanding that even in such our lives are enriched - the bad man being the good man's lesson. And the thought lingering that 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' #SingingLifeOhLife #LessonsFromTheFrontline