One Year Later

    It has been exactly a year since my last published writing.  Time is such a strange construct, so arbitrary and not always as illuminating as one would think.  But time and it's effects are inevitable.  How time affects each one of us (both as individuals and as parts of a whole) is difficult to quantify or anticipate... and often defies explanation.

    Life can be cruel and unforgiving, or it can offer hope of mercy and new beginnings.  When life is full of pain, hanging on to hope for a future where sustainable trust in the phrase "I'm okay" is achievable, can become seemingly impossible.  We must keep functioning somehow though.  We must keep breathing and try to focus on taking one day at a time, so we don't live in a permanent state of anxiety and/or depression worrying about what comes next.

    But taking one day at a time is steadily becoming harder for me to do, not easier.  After so many of the evolutionary experiences in my lifetime up to now, this seems counter-intuitive to me because literally taking one day at a time is precisely how I have survived for the last year.

    I deeply desire to continue growing into a simpler existence, of living only in the now... mindful and at peace inside. I want to be good to myself, and good to other people.  But in my recent attempts to maintain a reasonably healthy distinction between acceptance and forfeiture, I am struggling to stay on a path to the former; particularly while life's presentation of the latter is overwhelming enough to blot out the sun.  Acceptance can be more complicated and difficult than we think.

How does one know when enough is enough?

At what point is concession simply reasonable?

    I have subtitled this blog project "contemplating the human condition", and for nearly eight years that is exactly what I have done both on the page, and off.  But I think that for the last year I have been steadily running out of energy to explore, and needing to rest, to be at peace and heal.  Even people like me who are passionate about exploring and growing, can reach a point where we simply need to rest.