My Clarion Call

So let's keep it simple and say that it has been a rough year in so many ways. We may have expected the death of my grandpa, but we never could have forseen that my lovely, amazing godmother would have died in her early 50s. That's the worst of it, but it seems like there have been at least a dozen or two other things that have helped make 2010 so not the year we wanted it to be.

And yet.

Maybe in some ways, it has turned into what we needed it to be. Oh, not the deaths and the grief. I can't say that I 'needed' that this year, but let's cut to the stress, the depression of aimlessness, the money trouble; basically the reality of the underbelly of this glorious life. We certainly haven't wanted any of it, but who knows what the future holds, who knows when the lessons we're learning now will be desperately needed, or who's to say this isn't the start of that whirlwind, passionate life I've longed for.

When you have an overflow of those quiet, soft moments, you tend to appreciate them less, take them for granted, fail to see them for what they are. And if I'm honest with myself, I know that I've been doing that. Taking the downtime for granted, because somehow, in all that's been going on, I've still had too much of it.

Maybe this is just what is needed to help us appreciate every moment of this life to the fullest instead of spending large chunks of time as spectators.

We are blessed with 168 hours of living every week, if that's how we choose to spend it; living. 168! Are you seeing that number?? And yet so many of us putter and fetter and waste away this incredible gift of life.  And maybe sometimes you need to be placed solidly in a somewhat desperate situation to wake the hell up.

That's what I'm taking from this. Maybe this is my clarion call to finally embrace life fully, to quit dipping in a toe or a leg and just jump the hell in.

"I tell you: one must have chaos in one , to give birth to a dancing star.

I tell you: you still have chaos in you."

-F. Nietzsche