It was a difficult year last year. More difficult than I felt okay letting on. There were losses unshared, small failures, and a list of aspirations set aside that today are past their productive hours.

–

Many people I know had their own losses and their own aspirations to set aside than to entertain mine. People had bigger matters to attend than to have yet more piled on them. I managed more than once to lose my center in both big and small ways. I shared beliefs that interfered with harmony, and yet brought harmony to places that couldn’t find their own. Life is always a mixed bag, because people are.

–

I discovered again and at once, both weakness and strength . Two attributes that rarely express simultaneously in a balanced life. Then life found no balance anywhere this recent past as we can clearly see today. Lies functioning as truth, and truth wrought to work as disaffecting lies. Those we thought least possible to shake, stood clearly wobbling. While some we thought could be blown over by a breeze, stood storms we never could have imagined. Children found resilience, and adults found they weren’t so wise after all.

–

And yet among it all, love remains. Even though we’ve struggled without falling, we have a new respect for our potential to fail and our capacity to succeed. We understand more than ever before that life is fragile and nothing is more important than the lives and well being of those we love. We learned our neighbors don’t love us as much as we believed they did, and perhaps us to them as well. We learned it isn’t the stranger from whom we should fear harm, and just how divided we can be. Just how far apart our understanding of each other. We’ve learned we may have more in common with what we’ve called the foreigner, and less in common with our fellow countrymen and women. We’ve learned how angry and corrupt whiteness can be, something blackness has always understood and always stood against disaffirmed.

–

We’ve learned that conspiracies are not always true, and sometimes government stands at face value. We’ve learned how our suspicions can be used against us as easily as the truth can be lost to lies. We found out how easy it is to make the Supreme Court an arm of a political party, and how intricately fragile democracy actually stands. We’ve learned that voting matters, so much so the most direct objective for a minority to hijack a country is to remove voting rights form those most experienced, most knowledgeable as to who we are – those most fully and unfailingly informed. We’ve learned how strong our desire is to NOT know who we’ve been, that it can be used to lead us to the worst of who we are.

–

We’ve learned how bold a politician’s lies can be – as they’ve discovered how little they need to pander. We have no idea where we are headed, or who it will be that leads us there. We are in a fight to decide who we are, and for the first time ever evil has a better chance of winning.

For the first time I can recall, I am glad I am in the third act of my life. I don’t have the energy for a fight this big, but I’ll engage just the same. Others have been more tired for much longer with a whole lot more to lose. I’m really not entitled to say the word tired. I’ve had it easy and could step in and out at will, where others have had no such privilge.

When I look at the children we’ve raised and the manner in which we’ve raised them, I have faith we’ll find our way home. I have faith we’ll become who we hoped we would. I have faith everything will ultimately be okay. But I’m uneasy just the same. I have these no-knock thoughts that just show up out of nowhere. And they break in with indescribable alarm.

–

If I’ve learned one thing it is that truth matters. Every detail of it. And that forgiveness is the best road home – whether of self or of others. If at first we admit to ourselves what the truth is – the truth of where we came from – the truth of where we are – and the truth of where we want to go – then and only then will forgiveness or progress ever matter.