You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, in pain, experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain and learn to accept it, not as a curse or punishment, but as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Yesterday's Entries 2000: It's Raining Dogs TODAY's FOOD Breakfast: Rice Krispies
and toast TODAY on TV It's Animal Planet day CURRENTLY READING Bel Canto
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CYCLES 11 April 2004 I wish the title meant bicycles, but it doesn’t yet, at least not until I can get some help for this knee, or until the current problem (the varicose vein) begins to subside, if such a thing ever does. But I’ve been thinking about life cycles. I’ve always felt that my adult life went in cycles and for the most part it has been ten-year cycles. Some people I know go in six-year cycles, but I wonder if all of us live parts of our life in cycles of some sort of duration or other, with cycles sometimes overlapping and intertwining. The child-rearing cycle lasted for longer than 10 years, of course--and never really ends. I had the Lamplighter cycle which lasted about ten years--as a matter of fact, almost exactly ten years. It started out with answering an ad for someone to help put out a book to commemorate the Lamplighters 25th anniversary and it ended with writing the second book, following Gilbert’s death, ten years later. That was a very special cycle in my life. Kind of a weird cycle, having moved from the San Francisco Bay area 80 miles away and then finding a volunteer job which would keep me commuting back to the bay area. Never do things the logical way, Beverly! This was also the theatre cycle, being involved with local theatre here, fully immersed in the children’s theatre and doing publicity for every other theatre group in town. There was the foreign student cycle, which actually overlapped the Lamplighter cycle for a bit. (Heck, there were years there where my "cycles" looked like the Olympic symbol.) But from the time our first foreign student, Eduardo, entered our lives, it was a constant parade of people and countries through our house for ten years. I can’t even remember who the last one was now. But after about 10 years, we had learned about 14 different countries, made 70 different friends (well...some of them weren’t exactly friends) and with the kids leaving home and my working full time, it seemed time to bring that part of my cycle to an end. Then there was that work cycle. After working part time jobs and on-call jobs for a number of years, I finally got a full-time job in a real office and I was there just about 10 years, working from being the transcriptionist sitting in a coat closet, to the office manager with my own lovely office, to a new building where I was the office manager...in a supply closet, to finally leaving the job after David died. If I were a depressing person, I might say that the cycle that I hope I’m reaching the end of is the "loss cycle." Loss of a couple of jobs, loss of a couple of kids, loss of friends, other losses, like the full use of my arm and leg. But I’m more upbeat than that. I’d like to think of this cycle as the cycle of new discovery, even discovery in the face of tragic loss. Learning wonderful things about myself, tremendous highs and beautiful adventures. Discovering that after a lifetime of being a sloth that I was capable of movement. I could get my butt on a bike and love the feeling of riding. I could enter a gym without (too much) embarrassment. The nice thing about discovering new wonderful things about yourself is that even if you lose those things temporarily, you know that somewhere out there, there is the possibility of having them again. I don’t know what my new cycle is going to be, but I have the sense that I am moving into the next cycle. Perhaps this will be the cycle of creativity. With my expanded opportunities at the newspaper, the possibility of actually publishing a book, with my getting so immersed in and excited about the photographic possibilities of PhotoShop, maybe that will be my concentration for the next cycle of my life. All in all it has, so far, been a grand adventure, both the ups and the downs, and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. Well, maybe there are a couple of minutes I'd change, but basically, it's been a great adventure. I look forward to whatever my next cycle will be...
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For more photos, please visit My Fotolog and My FoodLog |
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Weight Lost to date:
43.8 lbs
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Created 3/29/04
