My theme for 2021: Beauty

I think I missed writing a blog entry on my theme for 2020, but I did manage to post it on Facebook and I was reminded of it when the new year rolled in. I wasn't thinking of coming up with a theme for this year—to be honest, I wasn't very hopeful; I wasn't really negative about it either, just ambivalent—but then the reminder also reminded me that I did want a life with more intentionality. 

So I thought back to what helped me through the 2020 and what I carry with me from it that I believe will help me even more in 2021, and then I came up with this: Beauty.

I actually want to say "lovely," but I feel like "lovely" only works in a sentence. But that is also what I mean. Lovely.

I refer to one of my favorite verses from the bible, which I discovered years ago in an essay I have since forgotten: 

"... Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

Whenever something bad happened in 2020, I was always comforted by something lovely. Sometimes I created it, sometimes I sought it out, sometimes it was given to me. Often, I simply focused on it, and it put me in a grateful, grounded space.

This year, I want more of it. Give me more of it. 

"We'll both end. We'll both begin"

If you look close enough, life as you know it ends each time you meet someone new. 

But not everyone changes the way the stars move.

***

Our Story
By William Stafford

Remind me again—together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
Some time we’ll cross where life
ends. We’ll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
I’ll touch you—a new world then.
Stars will move a different way.
We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.

Remind me again.

2021

To those of you who are still with me this new year, let us continue all our joys together and see them grow.

To those of you who are staying behind in 2020 (and even earlier), please look for me at that point in time when I wanted to take you with me, and know that I would have if you had let me.

To all of you, thank you, please forgive me, I'm sorry, I love you.