31^st December 2023

Review Time

The habit of reviewing a previous year and promising the self for the upcoming one is ingrained over a lifetime across many cultures and circumstances. My dominant thoughts today compete like pups and come as a conflicting mix.

My own cousin Carolyn, on her retirement earlier this year, wrote a lovely piece reflecting on her work life. Her appreciation and benefit echo my own work-life experience, which is very heartening.

My wife and I celebrated our golden anniversary in August, which gave us a chance to think back on our life together with all its ebbs and flows, leaving us with a great sense of gratitude. Our multigenerational household arrangement continues to thrive, giving us unending delight, especially in our three grandchildren. We feel very lucky and very grateful. This is all against a troubling world background.

I was born in 1945, at the end of World War II, a year before my father came home for good from that war. There were enormous difficulties recovering across all the war territories, not least in the homes of returning soldiers. My grandfather returned from World War I in 1918 and he and my grandmother lived with us until both died.  So my upbringing was shadowed by what we now understand as PTSD, which probably impacted all households, not just where soldiers returned but also where they did not. There was the expressed hope that such wars would never happen again.

Today, killing on a genocidal level is evident in many parts of the world, leaving in its wake swathes of fleeing populations, hunger, deprivation and destruction on a massive scale. All of this focuses attention away from the single biggest threat to all life and our planet’s existence – climate change.

There are, of course, heroic actors working feverishly to counteract all of this – good government activity, law and order systems, concerned and activist people and groups. It feels though, it is not enough and not soon enough.

I have a hope that somebody somewhere is working hard to counteract all of this, despite my sense of personal powerlessness. Many may rightly say that my pessimism is not helpful. However, right now, and at this moment, being honest with myself seems to be the best I can do.

I wrote the following a short while ago and it seems to fit.

Drowning in Neediness

Just above my abdomen centre

in the apex of the lowest ribs,

there is a quiver of longing,

felt but as yet unidentified.

There is an ache for touch,

all over touch, nerve waking,

muscle warming, skin toning;

effected at the hands of other.

There is an internal sobbing

to have lungs clear,

Breathe freely and easily,

no longer afflicted by dis-ease.

An irrational sensation,

unable to move

triggers fear, a sliding

towards ending - completion.

Forebrain seeks to explain,

hindbrain triggers a flood

of chemistry, which elevates

heat, further impedes breath.

The internal war mirrors

external upheaval: War,

disease, climate destruction;

makes physical -

the longing for a future.

Peter Clarke