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Winter Solstice 2000
The longest night The birth of light Branches bare Touch cold grey air And in our hearts A fire starts. May you ignite With pure delight All you hold dear In this new year.
Ok, so I got up this morning and read Wordsworth. When I started writing it was coming out in rhymes, so I thought I'd just go with it. Wordsworth I'm not, but it was fun. This is my happy-holiday-reflection page. This has been a quick year, and this holiday season has been filled with challenges and emotion. A little more than a week ago an ice storm (or more accurately a freezing rain) swept through the local area and knocked out electricity for approximately 240,000 people. I work at the electric company. I was also without power for six days myself, which added challenge to chaos. Then, in the midst of all this, I learned that a precious friend, Mimi, was killed in an accident. For a period of time I found myself living by candle light and reflecting on my beliefs about life and death and love and loss. At work I listened to people talk about the challenges they faced living without electricity. I was only handling escalated calls, which meant that every person I spoke with was either angry or desperate when we began talking. Co-workers sitting close by remarked at how well I was handling them. In fact, in all those calls, there were only three that ended poorly. We joked that I had a special empathy because my lights were also out. I think I had an added perspective, in that compared with the death of a loved one, living without electricity is only an inconvenience, rather than a disaster. After the funeral, as I was saying my goodbyes to friends, Ron hugged me goodbye and said two things, "Don't be a stranger... And keep your power." I, being the ambiguity queen, didn't hear what he intended. I realize that he was saying I should visit more often, and referred to me having electricity at home. I had taken "Keep your power" to a whole other place in an instant. Being with these bright, funny, loving friends had remeinded me of some parts of me I haven't been consistently expressing in my life. I had been thinking that being with them had been a reminder of who I am. "Keep your power" was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. It has long been my custom to ask and answer these questions at Winter Solstice: What dies today? and What is born today? This year those questions have multi-layered answers. I did some goal setting at the NLP training I took in October, and the changes I made in my thinking, combined with the promotion I received a month later, rocked my world for a while. It seemed my future was so bright and full of opportunity that I was overwhelmed. I had considered putting off that future until "later" ... "when I'm ready." I'm sure that Mimi didn't know when she was getting dressed for work that Friday morning that she was leaving her apartment for the last time. The truth is that I don't know what will happen tomorrow, and if I keep waiting for tomorrow, I'm not living today. So today I'm living and 'keeping my power.' My holiday wish for you is that you have all the warmth, light, love, hope, joy, delight and pleasure you can imagine, and that beyond that, there is so much good stuff in your life that it spills over onto the people that you love. (12/25/00)
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