Hope in the winter of life

I can hardly keep my eyes open and I have to be up early with my daughter but, my sister dropped a message that she is going to visit my father and asked if I want to talk with him. I don't know the last time I spoke directly with him. A year?

It seems strange.

My dad has been the ultimate holder for as long as I can remember he has said that his success would come in the winter of his life. Supposedly a fortune teller told him this and being an artist and romantic, he clutched to it through the years. He will turn 83 this year and can no longer paint like he once could - is that wintry enough?

Perhaps all we really need to get through life is what my father has never let go of, hope.

Maybe as long as we believe that there is a still a chance that things will work out, that we will survive like prisoners in a concentration camp or get what we think we deserve for the work we have put in, we will keep striving, keep pushing, keep struggling at life, clinging to that thread.

When I look into the mirror I see my father and I resemble him a lot in other ways too. I question how similar we are and whether I am just like him, struggling through life with nothing more than hope, a fortune tellers promise of a desire for the future fulfilled. It is all so naive but at the same time, what else is there, what option other than hoping for better than today do we really have?

Some will of course say the acceptance of the now and, I would say the same but, is it really possible or at least, I have never met anyone who has been able to completely do it. Many who say they can of course but, their behavior gives them away in short order. Behaviors are more trustworthy than words but, never to be completely trusted because, we all change, we are always changing.

Life is a movement of changes and while some are drastic, others imperceptibly nudge us this way and that, changing our course in a thousand different ways to lead us astray from where we thought we would ever be. Do you know how you ended up where you are, were you paying attention to all of the micro manipulations that sparked a thought here, a word there and a side step around where you intended to place your foot?

I can guarantee that your memory is far from immutable and there are literally millions of things that you either missed, forgot or misconstrued that had an influence on your life. Tell me, how well do you know who you are if you do not even know how you got to be where you stand today? The fallacy of self-awareness is that we are only aware of what we know and on a confirmation bias, make irrelevant all that we do not, including that of ourselves. I feel I know myself quite well yet, who feels that they do not?

I do not know if I will ever be successful in the way that I have dreamed I would be - dreamed or fantasized? Is there a difference and, does the fantasy still hold hope? It is hard to tell how much of our thoughts and emotions are intertwined and impossible to untangle, to tease apart. While we can believe we are thinking well, acting well, doing the best we ca,n, it is impossible to know for sure and if we ourselves are unable, no one else can.

My father is a good man and I do not think he ever wished ill upon another in his life yet, I do feel that there was more in him than was given. Is that a harm t the world, is it wrong to hold back one's best from others? Right to choose of course but if one knowingly chooses not to help or purposefully limits the good done, what does that mean?

Like the tree in the picture, we all stand alone and as I believe it to be, we are all judged alone by ourselvses. While some go easy, others are their own greatest critic and what I have found in my experience is, the greatest critics of themselves are the ones who are able to keep improving their performance because no matter what they did today, they still hope they can do better tomorrow.

Perhaps my dream of being able to have economic stability, a chance to improve the lives of others and maybe lead a life where there is more than struggle and hardship is a pipe dream but, I hope it is not. I hope that there is more to this life than surviving the various barrages of pain that befall so many, myself included. I hope there is a life where suffering is reduced to the point where at least at times, I can wake up in the morning pain free and, go to sleep at night without the cares of the day seeping into my dreams.

At 40, I do not expect I am going to make it to the age of my father as there have been too many health setbacks, too much damage done by illness and medication to live that far but, I d hope there is more than today, that this isn't the best life will ever get. Maybe it is, maybe winter is setting in for the final time.

It is impossible to tell.

Once upon a time I would have been able to have a discussion about these kinds of things with my father and he would have been able to offer some interesting perspectives he had heard or experienced along the way. Those times are long gone and now, his thoughts are filled with static - the falling snow of winter's mind.

I hope I never feel the cold of my mind slipping away on the ice.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]