From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

“And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet, 1875-1926.

I wonder what the new year of 2023 will bring. The past several years have been unsettling. Not only has the COVID pandemic disrupted and destroyed lives and businesses, but political disharmony, the violent, endless wars and the drastically shifting market have all contributed to making people anxious and feeling disheartened, even hopeless.

Hopefully the new year will lighten our hearts with new hope and joys in our lives.

Rilke wrote, “We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.”

In college my English classes led me to Rilke’s “Letters To A Young Poet.” The poet’s words offered comfort when I felt anxious and uncertain: he wrote, “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

“And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions.”

Many years ago I wrote a column  titled “Tempus Fugit” (Time Flies), which I’m going to refer to once again. Rather than living the questions, enjoying life, we anxiously distress ourselves about life’s outcomes. Too often we anxiously borrow trouble and let time past us by.

January, a time for new beginnings, has many of us writing well-intended resolutions to lead a healthier life and set goals to achieve new aspirations. Our intentions are so good. How often we rush through our days, always anticipating a new morning, a new beginning, a new start in life. Life is an endless cycle of anticipation.

At 3 we can’t wait to get rid of our three-wheeler to graduate to a two-wheeler. At 4 we can’t wait to be 5 to go to school with the big kids. Then we can’t wait to be part of the top grade in school because all the little kids look up to the oldest kids. At 12 we can’t wait to be 13, a teenager. At 15 we wait for our 16th birthday so we can date and drive. At 16 we wait for 17 and 18 to finally get out of high school, leave home and start college. We’re eager to be 21, the legal age to drink and vote…to be a real adult.

The days pass too quickly. Unconcerned, we wish precious time away. By the time I hit 30, I began to realize that time wouldn’t go on forever. School was completed; a marriage was made; my life as an adult was in gear. When I reached 40, years of raising children became a blur. I started to notice a few gray hairs and wrinkles on my forehead and around the eyes. I began to balk at time racing indifferently through my precious years. Why didn’t time stand still so I could get a handle on this aging process?

At 50 I finally realized time was passing me by. What did I still hope to do with my life? I wanted to travel and meet new people, paint some canvases and read more books. Life was no longer so rushed. I finally understand why my mother could sit on her screened porch for hours enjoying the simple pleasures of nature, a friend’s conversation, a cup of coffee and a cookie. Simple pleasures became satisfying.

Age grants us some wisdom. I now take time to appreciate each day’s sunrises and sunsets, revel in life’s ups and know that the down times will pass. It’s enjoyable to take time to relax and think about those years that passed so quickly as well as the possibilities that life still offers to all ages.

Let time stand still for a moment or two. Life’s endless cycle continues. Just be. Enjoy.

   

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.