When Just Being Alive Has To Be Enough
I grew old much too young. Life saw to that. Illness and surgeries brought lack and limitation. Separation and isolation during my recovery and rehab saw to the rest. And though I’ve tried and tried to overcome them to be and do all that I still wanted, I have not.
It’s not that I can’t do it. In many ways I know more and am better than I ever was. It’s just that I and my circumstances have changed to impose limitations and constraints that I have not yet found a way to overcome.
This puts me in a situation of unrequited desire that allows me no peace, leading me to try this or that in an effort to break through and achieve even a modicum of progress toward my goals, all without success. For those wondering what they are, “world teacher” was the carrot dangled by spirit to drive me on.
Perhaps it’s something we all have to face as we age, thinking we still have something to offer, but the world has passed us by. What we have and are have become insignificant, maybe even irrelevant, to those still playing the game of life out there in the “real” world.
So as I see the world go to hell in a handbag, so to speak, and think I can help, life keeps telling me to just sit back and watch it unfold, powerless to do anything about it.
Perhaps it is this sense of impotence that wears most upon me, and that all my life offers are just more opportunities to watch myself diminish and slip softly toward that good night when my time here is done.
It is a sobering thought, to realize that all that I am and all that I offer don’t matter much any more, at least to anyone other than family and a few friends (thanks, God, for them). But I still try to open eyes and offer ways through the darkness for others, even as my reach and impact continue to diminish.
It’s all I know how to do any more, to empower you to do and become more. Obviously God has other plans.
So I’m left to sit here finding meaning and purpose in what I am not and have not found a way to do, learning to live with myself and the fact that I am less than I hoped to be.
So sometimes, at least now for me, just being alive has to be enough.
God bless you indeed.
