But I fear I'm running out of time. There's about an hour left of 2019.
I feel sad to leave this year behind. I'm not quite sure yet what gives me this overall sentiment, but I feel like... this year has served me so well as a friend, and teacher. I thought last year was a learning milestone (god, the pain of 2018), and it definitely was -- but this year was a much kinder teacher. I feel somewhat that the turn of the year into a new decade is like stepping into a new world by myself, leaving a beloved teacher I'm not done learning from. At particular times this year, I feel like there were moments when I had been nudged, "See, you thought this, and it's actually this..." This beautiful, beautiful thing. And other similar kind, gentle nudges of, "See, you thought you couldn't, but you can..." Where I had thought of impossibilities, I had been slowly shown otherwise. See, and see, and see... until I felt a subtle happiness, and a hope that I never knew could appear in such form.
Thank You for allowing me to learn to trust the process,
and trust You.
This process; how do I summarise it most simply. We touched on it at book club, and I discussed it with E too. It's very easy to give lip service to the concept of faith and trusting the divine; but the delicate juggling of both work and trust is a skill painfully, painfully, earned and practised. And thenceforth necessarily and endlessly practised. Of the few friends I've talked to about this, it appears that where the skill has emerged, prior years and years of struggle had preceded. One swings from a despairing of fate, and then from an overly-exerted control of one's life (with accompanying emotional upheavals); but what it is that needs to be, is the careful dancing with the flow of life, that in-between space, where you don't control but neither do you relinquish a hold of the helm entirely; you just steer gently, just steer, and equanimity reigns.
Life is a series of moments, which one lives as if one were dancing, right now, around and around each passing instant. And when one happens to survey one's surroundings, one realises, 'I guess I've made it this far'. Among those who have danced the dance of the violin, there are people who stay the course and become professional musicians. Among those who danced the dance of the bar examination, there are people who become lawyers. There are people who have danced the dance of writing, and become authors. Of course, it also happens that people end up in entirely different places. But none of these lives came to an end 'en route'. It is enough if one finds fulfillment in the here and now one is dancing.
~ The Courage To Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
-- which as it turns out, has become a most precious book I will have to re-read on a regular basis.
2020, insya Allah, you will be similarly amazing in ways I can't imagine now. 💜💚💗
Happy New Year to you, reader!
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