No, this will not be some memoriam to every celebrity who died this past year. While I too was saddened by the losses, it’s our individual lives and how those loves affect others that means the most. I won’t even discuss my personal woes, because the reality is, they’re mine and I own them. It’s called accountability and while this is in no way a pat on the back, it’s a lost art.
This year has been a stressful one for me, but how can I complain when I have friends who have lost their parents, their siblings, their husbands and wives, even their children? I can’t in good faith ask for their pity or even their sympathy, or is it empathy, when I know the pain of losing the person who matters most to them. I can understand and show empathy and from where I am now, I can only do so by quietly dealing with life. Not the lemons we equate to bad tidings, but life.
People are enamored by clichés and their use of them says a lot about how we misunderstand our existence. Life isn’t meant to be viewed as “in comparison” to time. Life is time. And life is not short, it’s long. Very long. Some are cut short, but the average person will live to see parts of eight, maybe nine decades. My grandmother lived for 100 years and she died leaving me with the realization that we’re slaves to our routines and the very nature of routine is monotony. We do so, because it brings us a comfort and we, as humans, tend to be afraid of the unknown. We claim to be adventurous, but then we stay in the same home for 10, 20, 30 years. Some of us live within the same city or town for our entire lives. There is no adventure in that and it only makes life seem longer.
In 2016, I lost friends who were trapped in their own existence. Some confined physically and some mentally to a routine which made every day seem like an eternity. Hardships make time stand still and there is some truth to that adage that “time flies when you’re having fun.” I look back on my life and those I’ve lost, especially in 2016, and my time with them seems like a blur, because it was. I wish I could have a little more time with my friend’s father to play cards and laugh. To down drinks and laugh about the past with my friend Linda. To sit and gaze in awe at the strength of my friend Matthew and appreciate how much love he brought out of everyone.
This past year will be remembered for the loss of pop culture icons and yes, they had a huge impact on my life. An Impact I don’t mean to minimize in any way. But, we must remember, that they were also someone’s son or daughter and maybe even someone’s mother or father. They were someone’s best friend and someone’s lover. They were those everyday things for someone, who saw them as part of their routine, in a very long life, that suddenly felt much shorter when thinking back on the time with them and how that will never be again come to be.
This year was no longer or shorter than any other year, but in many ways, it made of our lives slow down, to experience the pain and speed up just fast enough for those moments of glory to seem fleeting. The new year will bring promise and within a week, maybe two, we’ll talk about the past year with some sort of nostalgia, remembering it as if it was ages ago, holding on to this falsehood that life is short. Life is long, but our ability to experience its joys are short. Especially in this age, where today’s revelation is yesterday’s standard, faster than we can remember enjoying the novelty. Sadly, we treat lives and friendships that way, because we don’t realize that we have time and loads of it. We just need to stop looking for the next moment, while we’re enjoying the present. For those who love clichés, it’s called the present, because we’re supposed to unwrap it slowly, enjoy it and be thankful for those who gave it to us.
Goodbye 2016….you were, a year.
This year has been a stressful one for me, but how can I complain when I have friends who have lost their parents, their siblings, their husbands and wives, even their children? I can’t in good faith ask for their pity or even their sympathy, or is it empathy, when I know the pain of losing the person who matters most to them. I can understand and show empathy and from where I am now, I can only do so by quietly dealing with life. Not the lemons we equate to bad tidings, but life.
People are enamored by clichés and their use of them says a lot about how we misunderstand our existence. Life isn’t meant to be viewed as “in comparison” to time. Life is time. And life is not short, it’s long. Very long. Some are cut short, but the average person will live to see parts of eight, maybe nine decades. My grandmother lived for 100 years and she died leaving me with the realization that we’re slaves to our routines and the very nature of routine is monotony. We do so, because it brings us a comfort and we, as humans, tend to be afraid of the unknown. We claim to be adventurous, but then we stay in the same home for 10, 20, 30 years. Some of us live within the same city or town for our entire lives. There is no adventure in that and it only makes life seem longer.
In 2016, I lost friends who were trapped in their own existence. Some confined physically and some mentally to a routine which made every day seem like an eternity. Hardships make time stand still and there is some truth to that adage that “time flies when you’re having fun.” I look back on my life and those I’ve lost, especially in 2016, and my time with them seems like a blur, because it was. I wish I could have a little more time with my friend’s father to play cards and laugh. To down drinks and laugh about the past with my friend Linda. To sit and gaze in awe at the strength of my friend Matthew and appreciate how much love he brought out of everyone.
This past year will be remembered for the loss of pop culture icons and yes, they had a huge impact on my life. An Impact I don’t mean to minimize in any way. But, we must remember, that they were also someone’s son or daughter and maybe even someone’s mother or father. They were someone’s best friend and someone’s lover. They were those everyday things for someone, who saw them as part of their routine, in a very long life, that suddenly felt much shorter when thinking back on the time with them and how that will never be again come to be.
This year was no longer or shorter than any other year, but in many ways, it made of our lives slow down, to experience the pain and speed up just fast enough for those moments of glory to seem fleeting. The new year will bring promise and within a week, maybe two, we’ll talk about the past year with some sort of nostalgia, remembering it as if it was ages ago, holding on to this falsehood that life is short. Life is long, but our ability to experience its joys are short. Especially in this age, where today’s revelation is yesterday’s standard, faster than we can remember enjoying the novelty. Sadly, we treat lives and friendships that way, because we don’t realize that we have time and loads of it. We just need to stop looking for the next moment, while we’re enjoying the present. For those who love clichés, it’s called the present, because we’re supposed to unwrap it slowly, enjoy it and be thankful for those who gave it to us.
Goodbye 2016….you were, a year.
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