It’s the last day of the year––and the last day of the decade–– and like many of you, I find myself staring back down the road at the past ten years. I started this decade as a single mom of two tween girls, and pregnant with my son. I was broke, in so very many ways other than just financial. I lived in a tiny, 600-square-foot apartment, not far from my home now, but it feels like a lifetime ago. I was still searching for the truth of life in others back then, still looking beyond myself for what I needed. I was still plugged into the world of cable TV, materialism, the standard American diet, and what other people thought of me. It had no idea how to find more. I was surviving. That’s the best way I could put it.
What I ate, who I chose to listen to, and who I spent my time with. What I found valuable, who I admired, and how I treated others. All of it wasmy very best back then. That isn’t an excuse––it’s merely a part of my story. I had so much to learn. Looking back over the chasm created this past 10 years gives so much perspective as to how I’ve changed.
Growth rarely comes easily, and it’s been a rough decade. It was wonderful, too. I met my husband and we bought a big, beautiful house and poverty stopped being my reality. My mom’s health deteriorated and she died. My two oldest daughters went to college and have families of their own now. My two youngest children were born and are thriving. These past 10 years have been the fullest of my life. So much gained and lost that I often feel like an entirely different person. And yet, I’m not. The person who I was in 2010 is still in here, she has merely changed shape and substance based on the winds of change. I am not someone new. I have merely changed my focus to redirect my growth.
When I look back at who I was then, I know that I was doing the best I could for my own level of consciousness. I was still asleep to so much about the world and us humans who think we know so much. But liars will always think everyone lies. Cheaters are going to think everyone is sleeping with their husbands, and thieves will always blame the one standing closest for stealing what they themselves misplaced. We all see the world through our own lens, created by the people who raised us and influence us, the life we’ve made for ourselves and the way we choose to walk through it. Maybe in another decade we’ll be lucky enough to look back and see our own growth. Or maybe we’ll still be standing in the ashes of what was, yelling “poor, little old me” in hopes someone feels sorry for us. Maybe if life is shitty enough, someone actually will take pity, for whatever that is worth. As for me, I’d rather live here and now.
Yet we live in difficult and divisive times that everyone wants to escape from here and now. We are at war with each other and ourselves and no one seems to know how to fix any of it. We’ve tried everything from yoga to juice cleanses to the keto diet in hopes of fixing the seemingly unfixable. It seems to me that most don’t even want to look behind the curtain to see what exactly needs to be fixed. We’d rather take a pill and get back to the bar. Or the internet. Or whatever vice we’ve chosen. We all have our own demons. It’s just a matter of how visible they are, or how socially acceptable, but we all have them.
Everyone one of us feels the sting and tasted the bitterness of this division and we all deal with it our own ways. We’ve all lost friends because of “politics,” which is really just saying what direction our own moral compasses and values are directed. We’ve all lost loved ones to death, disagreements, rumors or truths. Not a one of us has walked out of this decade unscathed, though we all like to think of our own pain as so special. But we are all victims of life, because loss itself is part of the human condition. We will all rise and fall. We will all get broken. We all have to get up each day and go on anyway.
Hopefully some of us will find a way to heal ourselves. Maybe some of us will even find ways to heal others at the same time. It remains to be seen what this mammal called human beings will end up doing with our big brains, our opposable thumbs, and all our technology and power.
Will we save the planet, or doom it? Will we use all the knowledge at our fingertips to evolve, or will we perish like all the other endangered species? Do we even realize we’re endangered?
We can use our gifts for good or for evil. It’s up to us–– as a race, as a society, and as individuals.
The path is ours, whichever one we choose to take. We can look toward the future and see hope and possibility, or we can claim it will always be this way and use it as an excuse to eat and drink our lives away in a haze. We can use our energy to make a better world for the humans we’ve created, or we can cry over all we lost over while binging on the same recipes that continue to pass heart disease through the generations.
We are one little set of finger prints, so we can’t change everything, but it does start with us. No one ever really wants to hear that and I’m sure I’ll get nasty messages in my inbox from people thinking I’m talking directly to them.They’ll scream that their high blood pressure is genetic, that they are doing all they can and I have no right to talk this way, and they’ll give excuses why they cheated on their wife for over a decade while demanding I tell them who blabbed.
The truth is, this message is for all of you and none of you. It’s for whoever feels the call to listen and hear.
The other truth is that I no longer have the energy to deal with all the drama. What you do to change the world––or don’t do––in the grand scale or your own path, that’s your business. Your excuses and reasoning will be your cross to bear and you will carry that weight. I have my own past and truths to walk through the world with.
There came a tipping point in my life where I looked around and saw that it was no longer about me–– it’s about the whole. Maybe it was when my granddaughter was born and I saw how the seeds we plant in this life cast out further and further, and how our hands and our lives touch all of it. It doesn’t start with us and it won’t end with us, either. We are but links in the chain, mere visitors here, but this journey is ours to create while we last. We can waste it on rumors and bullshit, or we can go out and make it the best damn life we can.
If I’m going to make the world a better place for the generations that come after, I can’t stop to address every yipping complaint. I can no longer care about what people think of me. I can only concentrate on my own truths, and what I’m doing to assure that this amazing, sparkling, painful, beautiful life we live as humans continues for my children, my granddaughter and her children. That is doesn’t stop with us.That we leave this place better than we found it. And I don’t think that’s about money, or how big or fancy our home is, or what college we go to. Or what kind of status our job brings.
I think it’s about how much we loved, and how much of that love was unconditional ––a word we throw around as easily as we cast off those who say something we didn’t want to hear. I think it’s about how we walk the one and only path we have, how we treated those we loved, and what we leave them when we pass.
Who will I be remembered as? What lessons, joys, sorrows, and truths will be left behind in my wake? Did I leave a big fat mess of lies and secrets to be unraveled like an unkempt skein of yarn, or did I live my life out loud so that only the lessons of my path are laid out like a Sunday dress, pressed and ready to be picked up and used? Did I love enough? Do they know it? Did I do all I could?
I would love to say we all have time. But this decade has shown far too much loss for any of us to believe that the clock isn’t ticking.
For me, it’s time to close the door on what is left behind. It’s time to give it all we’ve got for the generations that come behind us, to clean up the mess in the here and now, starting with ourselves.
michelle roth 