This season

This season will not last. That is not a tragedy; it is its defining feature.

This birthday, while still in the middle of it, I am trying to drink it all in. In some ways, I already know what to expect and how life changes. Yet there are always wildcards, always something waiting around the corner that I could never have anticipated. I grudgingly accept that uncertainty. Because as the garden grows, so does the gardener.

It was not exactly this past year, but the last few years, that I truly learned how to live with myself.  I gave myself the love that I often felt I deserved but never received. I also cheered for every joy little or big that came on my way. But above all, I finally sat with the loss, the rejections, and the  disappointments - and embraced them as 'meant-to-be'. The amount of truth I can now accept about myself without running away still surprises me at times, though I admit I occasionally feel the urge to escape my own life.

I am tempted to say that life did not turn out the way I would have wished, if only because that seems to be the fashionable thing to say. But honestly, I do not remember how I imagined my life would be. All I know is that I have kept putting one foot in front of the other—some steps jaunty, some daunting—to arrive here. Tempted as I am to go on at length about the highs, the lows, and the seriously average bits, I will stop myself. Noteworthy of all, I am grateful for the gift of an ordinary life—something I have always cherished and hoped for. Mine has rarely been an either-or kind of life: never wild and free, yet never full of despair either. There have been the wows, the what-ifs, the aaarghs, and all the in-betweens with a true sense of life always in motion. Though real, none of it is really permanent. 

I know this season, too shall pass. So I am celebrating it now, just as it is.