Ulog: If this is the last year of life as we know it… If this is the last month, or last week, or last day … what then?

Today I opened Word for the first time in quite a long time. It seems I've really only had it open to write resumes for four different people ... except this one file name caught my eye! "What if this is the last year of life as we know it"

I had to open it to see what I was thinking! I felt very confused. I could have written this just last week. Instead, I wrote it last week two years ago. Before I spent so much time being hurt and sick.

I can't recall the audience. I still had my web site up but it was largely abandoned. I hadn't started on any of the STEEM platforms. I wasn't writing publicly. I dunno.

Part of me is very frustrated to realize the things I wrote are actually more real now and still entirely true. The other part of me thinks, "Hey! I've actually survived the last two years and learned a lot about health and stuffs."

I can tell you this: I have spent a lot of time puzzling over that question. I designed a planner for myself around the theme of "what if this is my last day?" It's a pretty good planner plan, IF and WHEN I use it. Which ironically, I'm trying to use it, again.

I have developed a little theme or two around the ideas that I quote to a certain someone very frequently -- this last week especially. I will share one of them at the close.

So. Without further drama, I present my musings from two years ago. Also ironic, the first half of this I could have written 6 years ago.

The Musing

December 21, 2016

After all, as it is so often said and proven, “None of us are promised our next breath.”

In this last year, many events have made me aware of the truth in this.

And many more events and observations have made me aware we are very near to losing even the façade of civility between all factions of people … and oh how many factions there are … and how passionately we are hated if we dare to challenge or disagree with someone … even over the very smallest thing. But, heaven help us all, every little thing is obviously tied to the deepest, darkest possible agenda. Obviously. If you can’t see it, you’re a racist, chauvinistic pig. Obviously. And obviously, I need to brush up on my name calling skills because I only used three derogatory terms.

Truth departed long long ago (as it was no longer wanted and deeply resented) and it left us to the devices of our imaginings.
Our imaginings masqueraded as logic and reason for some time. Now, logic and reason seem to have left us in the lurch. Leaving us only with wild imaginings. World Wide Wildly paranoid imaginings.

And in such a world, how can we be far from nuclear war? And really, in many places, it’s being proven that nuclear weapons are not necessary in order to completely destroy all hope of life. Never mind “normal life.”

And if not war, how long can we survive by scarring the earth beyond repair and poisoning the very air we breathe and water we drink? And how can we destroy the genetics of our food and our bodies and survive as humans?

In so many places we can actually see the air we breathe. Just in case you’re too young to remember or haven’t left the city limits in a while, it’s not supposed to be that way.

Our earth is unable to clean its oceans as we look for a million ways to kill the inhabitants. And more so do the rivers and streams and lakes and swamps and wetlands struggle to protect their inhabitants. We allow horrible things to enter our waterways. Now they are overwhelmed and cannot clean the water. We struggle to clean the water ourselves and so stupidly pollute the waterways even more in the process.

These facts are not enough because we depend on our WWW paranoid imaginings and run around like Chicken Little screaming that the North Pole is melting … in a long time from now. Really? We can’t we be more like Paul Revere and round up the troops to do stuff about the immediate dangers? Stuff that is actually really happening Right Now. Right. Now.

Even earth itself seems to be coming undone. It is shaking and trembling like never before, especially in the history of mechanically recording these events. It is also exploding at a record breaking pace with new and old volcanoes.

A great many people are seeing all this and are filled with fear, anger, even hate. Others feel there is a great deal of pointlessness to life.

And numerous people say, “Where is God? If this Jesus is suppose to return and bring peace, He’d better hurry up. Soon there will be no more people, there will be no more earth.”

It is very near to prophecies in the Bible that nearly all will be destroyed. Yet many of these who demand The Messiah show up for the rescue are the same people who act in their daily lives as if the return of Jesus will be an easy thing to endure. People need to get their Bibles out and read! But that’s another day’s discussion … And I’m pretty sure that’s a ditto kiddo regardless of the god you follow or don’t follow. But that’s yet another day, too.

So, I feel perfectly justified in asking, “If this is our last year of life, or at least life as we know it, what do we want to continue with? What new do we want to take on? And, what do we want to jettison?”

Me, I am just beginning to weigh out what is pointless and what is exceedingly, urgently important. Balance is obviously paramount. A body could get ridiculous with this idea – to the point of taking themselves in a terrible place by the end of a year.

But still, this question applies in different ways. If this is my last year, what would I want my husband to have to deal with … a messy disaster or something orderly? All my useless items or items of value? More, what memories would I leave him with?

What would I want my children and grandchildren to have? And the rest of my family. Mostly, they do not know me. Because, reasons …

And what do I want in my life? Why am I choosing chaos over beauty? Why do I constantly allow people to shut me down? Why am I spending time on the trivial?

I do know I want my words to be more meaningful.

And so. It is time to admit …
it is time to stop wasting time on lesser things and lesser thoughts and lesser actions because …

The only thing unchanging is that everything changes.
Life can turn on a dime.
Life changes in a twinkling of an eye.
We aren’t promised our next breath.

There’s quite a bit of frustration and separation between most of my family and myself. A lot is my fault.

A lot of the separation comes from the fact that they cannot move past who I was to where I am because they have not been on my journey and would never want to have been on my journey. Many wish they could have skipped the part of the journey when I did take them.

Mainly, I have kept my journey a deep dark secret that they can only make assumptions about. I think it might be time to write about my story. I have a deep suspicion that some can relate in ways that I would not want them to be able. It is not fair to leave them thinking they are the only ones.

And, in general, most deserve some type of explanation. They wish they could understand why I “went off the deep end” so many times. …

The sad thing about my “deep end” is that compared to what others go through, I was still in the “shallow end.” I would never want to go through a deeper end. There is sadness enough and devastation enough in what was done to me and what I did because of it.

Sigh.

It can seem like such a small thing when the first attack comes, just a wave in our ocean that we bob through. We don’t always have the privilege of understanding the wave is taking us into a riptide. Or, wait, perhaps it is a circling shark. Sharks don’t always do the courtesy of showing their fin before they move close enough to attack. In any case, we don’t often understand the first ripple, the first wave.

Sometimes devastation comes in like a tsunami. A tsunami without warning. And we are gone.

So, I am working out how and what and where to tell my story in a way that is beneficial.

In thinking back over my story, I am reminded of so many stories from other women … that I think should be shared in one way or another.

It has crossed my mind to mingle our stories together in a way that can leave everyone wondering who is whom. Time will tell.

And then I trailed off, ... abruptly.

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So. What time has told is this: I'm still safely hording my stories away except for one little chickadee out there. She told me recently, "I hope some day I'm sharing my stories, to encourage a young girl far away, on my computer named Mama Bear."

I told her, "I hope you create excellent stories to tell!"

She promised she would. I'm rather counting on it!

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The themes I've begun to repeat:

Live like you will die tonight in your sleep. Work like you will see the dawn without regrets. --MarillaAnne

Another version:

Every evening closes a year. Every dawn begins a new year. Every dawn is a hopeful new beginning. --MarillaAnne

And .....

Take a grateful look around your life when you realize that right this second you are breathing, still. --MarillaAnne

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