Dear Reader,
Five years ago this week, I clicked the “Publish” button for my first ever post of “Intuitive Cartography.”
Where were you five years ago, dear reader? What has happened for you in that time span?
I have experienced several of these time markers lately – last year marked 35 years since I graduated from high school, 30 years since I completed a glorious, life-changing, hitchhiking trip around America, 15 years since my dad died at age 81 and 5 years since my mom died at age 92, 5 years of marriage to my beautiful soul mate… while this year marks 30 years since I moved to New York City to pursue a career as a dancer, 5 years since I moved to Shetland to live with my wife and step-daughter, 1 year, in November, since returning with Louise to live in the United States, and of course – 5 years since I launched this blog.
Sometimes I find it difficult to make meaning of those markers. In a way they feel random, representing linear passage of time since significant life events, grouped into significant bundles – five years, ten years, thirty years.
Perhaps I find it difficult because I am so immersed right now in the present. I am writing to you in the early morning, watching the rising sun transform this little lake outside my window, surrounded as it is by mountains and evergreens here in Southwestern Maine. Let’s face it, the present is the best place to hang out.
Once in a while, though, it is good to look back at different periods of your life – because life is cyclical, for all of us – and reflect on their significance, on how they might inform who we are becoming right now, in this moment.
For me, the past five years have been dominated by the fact that I spent four of those years living in a country other than my country of origin. I am barely beginning to understand the impact of that experience, although I know it has profoundly changed me for the better. I am so grateful for the opportunity, and acknowledge the accomplishment of having done it.
In terms of writing this blog, it has certainly been a journey of discovery. Sometimes it has been exhilarating, at other times frustrating. It at times been consistent, while at other times been far less consistent than I would have expected before I began. The results have been less than perfect, but the process has been perfection itself.
So here I am, five years later. I am still writing, still asking questions, still exploring what it means to be human – and I know that I am better for having done it.
Is there something you have accomplished in the past five years for which you have not yet expressed gratitude, or fully acknowledged for having changed you for the better? If you don’t acknowledge where you have been, it can be more difficult to acknowledge where you are.
What have you started, or what would you love to start, that might just transform your life while you aren’t looking, that might allow you to look back five years from now and say “Wow, I did that, didn’t I!” And that transformation might in turn give you the desire and the insight and the courage to dream some more, and start the next thing….
We often want the big leaps, and the thrills they provide, but I am here today to put in a good word for each small step, dear reader; don’t forget to love each small step.
I honor your loving heart,
John
Leave a Reply