I never have a preordained goal for the year. I don’t give the year names or themes. While I do have an overall goal for my life, I pretty much let the year develop organically. Except this year I’ve noticed a pattern.
Reconnection
I can’t tell you how many times in the last few years since one of my oldest and dearest friends moved that I have said to her, “I need to come to visit.” For years I didn’t make it there because the days are long and the years are short and one day you wake up and go “Whoa, what the hell just happened.” That’s when I finally say, “Screw it,” book the flight and see my friend.
There have been smaller instances of hearing from a friend through someone else. In those moments you either reach out or get busy and don’t and more years pass you by. I took the opportunity, to reconnect with a friend I haven’t seen in years and it was a great afternoon, hiking in the forest preserve and catching up.
We need these connections.
What we need to really be, is present in our lives, see what is happening around us and jump on the opportunities as they come. Otherwise, the pile of missed opportunities will outgrow the opportunities we chose to see through, and what the hell is good with that?
I recently saw my very first best friend for the first time in several years for lunch and a hike. We’ve known each other since I was born, six weeks after her, to be exact. It’ll be 55 years this July.
There’s something very special about spending time with someone who knew you in diapers, who grew up with you, who shares your earliest memories. A permanence in life where there is so little.
The point is my year has turned into a year of Reconnection and Connection. I’ve made choices to seek them out rather than wait for them to hit me on the head.
As I see my oldest and dearests, wind my way through the long-term past and the shorter-term past, as I seek out opportunities to make new connections, with people similar to me, I look forward to
what’s to come.
I’ve always had a goal; but I haven’t always reached it. This time I’m trying something different. I’m reconnecting with myself, and the things, and people that mean so much to me. Whether it’s hiking or lunch or shopping, it’s being present. It’s feeling the sun warm my skin, the wind tickle my chin, the sound of another’s laugh.
Turning 55 has been the weirdest of all wake-up calls and has given me a different determination.
An opportunity I won’t let pass me by.
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