October, belated.

     We hit October from a dark place, beset by emotions and loss.  It’s been a tangle of heightened emotions wrapped with the simultaneous desire to help and hide.  Such times profoundly confuse and stymie our logical minds because, in the moment, we can’t decide what’s best to do first.  We don’t know what fits the times.  Sometimes, when we are bombarded with the currents of modern life so unrelentingly,  when we or someone we care for is blindsided by trauma, when our fellow humans are subject to tragedy after tragedy, conducting ‘normal’ lives becomes a trial in itself. (standing witness becomes a trial, getting out of bed becomes a trial, really, hearing about and reacting to one more calamity pushes us to a place of deep cover.

     There is no slack left to hold the sorrow for everything, we are full up with despair.  During eras like this, I try to focus on what I can do, I embrace poco a poco – little by little – because a slow and gradual pace is better than no pace at all.  Remaining in the moment, keeping our hearts and minds focused on what we CAN do is the essence of the month.  Within the bowels of loss, we acknowledge the strain, while resisting the urge to give up, because stopping during a One year is the kind of thing we should try NOT give in to.

     A One year can be about tearing down, it can be defined by what is no longer there.  Look back to periods of loss and assess it carefully, clearly, evenly.

     What did you do with the subsequent space?  How did you grieve?  How did you rebuild, make do, reinvent, rebrand?  How did you move forward (to be sure, if you are reading this, you did Some Thing.  Figure out if your coping mechanisms were successful or not.  Hang with the good ones, chuck the rest.  Yes, it’s quite simplistic, but in practice, doing what we know worked before, is, surprisingly not as easy as we might think.

     During a one year and a two month, we shouldn’t expect easy.  We should expect resolve.

     To give a little structure to your personal search for answers, try to remember how you faired during in the following years during common memory: 1999, 1990, 1981, 1972, 1963, 1954, 1945, 1936, 1927, 1918.