Happy annual beginning
by rebecca ~ January 1st, 2009. Filed under: Beginning Spiral.
This picture has nothing to do with the below message, and yet everything to do with it. I leave you to discover the connection.
The sun finally broke through the thick cloud cover we who are trapped in Minnesota had been suffering under for what seems like months. Yes~~!
Yesterday, however, I spent the afternoon curled up in a chair at the downtown library, reading and taking notes obsessively about one of my interests–graphic novels. It was a love~ly day…until I ran to catch the wrong bus and ended up having to walk in sub-zero weather (slipping about 4 times, completely wiping out once) along busy roads on sidewalks covered with black ice.
I walked for about an hour, until my husband finally answered his cell phone when I was five blocks from home. So, two blocks from home, I got the “ride home” I had been longing for. Since I also happen to have a nasty cold that has erased my voice for 3 days–my stint in-the-elements was not a comedy of errors as much as a comedy of terrors for me. Needless to say, perhaps, I was in bed by 9:30pm and woke up at 12:01a.m. exactly and thought to myself–Happy New Year!
So–I am here inside my house, next to the heat-bearing radiator, where any sane person would be on January 1st, 2009, in Minnesota–land of the snow, the frozen nostrils, and androgynous winter fashion.
The moral of the story is, I guess, that I might have had to experience one hour in which to freeze in the cruel winter wind, but thanks to having a home to walk toward and a husband who eventually answers the phone, I am fully alive and happy to be so.
Okay, take a deep breath for the following run-on sentence: May all those in our world with less fortunate news find the basics–Love, food, shelter, clothing, good health, peace, freedom to read and dream, and clean water–and may they get what they so greatly deserve and need because of their own ingenuity and struggle and because those, like me, who have most of the above also become willing to give our time and (if we have it) our coins to help them achieve these true essentials, so that–ultimately–we can all help out others, until we have passed the gift of basics and on and on.
Oh, dear, am I a socialist? [That’s potentially the new dirty word in the USA, it seems! It used to be liberal].
Yes, I am, if it means being aware of the privileges I have, and that many have more than I, and that many, many more people have less privilege than I do–and that this bothers me; well, then, yes, I am exactly that. In the end, I am probably just a pathetic, sentimental soul (re. closet optimist) who believes we all can do many things to (when we see our faces in the mirrors across the planet) say to ourselves that we are making a positive difference in this chaotic world. Not so much to wish for in 2009, is it?