Thankful

This is a time of year a lot of us start to contemplate things and the life around them. I tend to get sentimental this time of year and think of the things I have lost. The people I have lost. I start to think about my place in the world.

The funny thing is that the end of the year and all holidays are arbitrary and made up by humans to mark the passage of time. Sure, the sun rises and sets and that marks the passage of time and the passage of time marks the passage of days, weeks, and months. It’s all happening but how it happens and when is up to us, just as the meaning of the passing is. Holidays are a good way to celebrate and reflect though. They allow us to cherish and create good times and to think of and mourn the bad ones.

None of this is bad at all.

Every year has its ups and downs and some years are more up than down.

Duh, right?

It feels like things get harder the older we get but it’s more that mortality weighs more heavily on us as we age. We know our end is coming as is the end of those we love. We have lost people as well as we get older. It all feels harder because we know time is getting shorter.

This has been a hard year among many hard years.

The loss of our Danger dog has crushed me and changed me.

But I still got to know him and to love him.

We still got to ease his suffering at the end.

Those things matter.

He mattered.

He always will.

I put a book out.

I wrote a lot.

I put on some events.

I watched a lot of fun movies and some pretty awful ones.

I recorded a heap of podcasts and got to interview some fascinating people.

I have a job and work with folks I like.

I have a family I adore.

I have some great friends that have stuck around.

It all matters.

It’s all part of the amazing tapestry of my life.

Good, bad, and meh.

Amidst it all, the whole woven rug of life, it drives me nuts though how people still work so hard to keep other people out of their silly clubs. We gatekeep art, religion, politics, jobs, and even humanity. We think that we alone get to decide what matters and doesn’t and who matters and doesn’t.

We work so hard to keep one another out without ever bothering to see that we’re just building a wall in a desert and not really keeping anything in or out. We’re just trying to make ourselves feel good.

The thing is that if you live true to yourself. If you amplify the things you love and the people you love and you work to make the world a little less awful then that is what matters. The smallest piece of art, the quietest song, and the random act of kindness no one sees matters. Everything matters. Once we build that wall in ourselves though and block out the world and the people in it then we’re just marking time until the end.

For my part, I am going to try to keep creating and doing things to make the world interesting and will hope folks come along for the ride.

Hey, I write books.

I podcast.

I review movies.

Check it all out.

I appreciate it.

…c…