A Word Edgewise |
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A Word Edgewise |
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Last Updated 06/30/05
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Email: mjclen@our-town.com
New Years
A noted child psychologist who was quite gifted in working with children, once said that when you can't grant a child's wish in fact, do it in fancy. He gave an example. Once when he was speaking to children in a remote village, playing for them on his harmonica, listening to them, one little boy said, "I want you to give me your harmonica."
The man who had other entertaining engagements in the area but only one harmonica answered, "Oh, I wish I could give you my harmonica. I wish I could give it to you and you could play tunes to make even the scare crows dance the very first time you tried. I truly wish I could, but I can't." The little boy, with a big smile on his face, went away. Perhaps he thought, "That important man would really like to give me his harmonica. I must be someone special."
I wish I could give you great gifts for the New Year. I would begin by giving you peace. I don't mean that the world would be at peace--though that would certainly be a great thing. I suppose there will always be fighting among nations and groups within nations, but I would give you peace within yourself.
With some great miraculous power, I'd erase the bitterness gathered through the days and months and years, pushed aside in some dark cranny of your heart that you take out often and examine and prune and fertilize, making it grow, then try to cram it back into the same cranny--but it has become too big. It refuses to be pushed aside but must flavor all of your thoughts and loves until your days are tarnished. I would shake out with the bitterness all envy and jealousy, all memory of intentional and unintentional slights and hurts, so that peace might abound.
I would love to give you the gift of sight--not sight with your eyes, though that is wonderful. I'd give you the ability to see with your eyes and your heart, so that you could savor the regard and the bits and pieces of love that go into each transaction with your fellow human kind. My gift would be of a filtered sight so that the ugliness, the bitterness and pettiness of others would not reach through your consciousness. Not that you would be hampered by the inability to determine others intentions, but that because you held no ill-will in your own heart you would not attribute ill-will to another.
I wish for you, and wish I could grant for you, beautiful memories of people and events in years gone by. No life stretching through childhood into adulthood, and even beyond, can be without beautiful memories. So often we are crowded with cares and struggles, difficult times and heart breaks that we begin to go through our days with our fists clenched. Then, prying open a clenched fist reveals a fistful of crushed butterflies. Bits of scenes of happiness must be hidden somewhere. I wish that they might shine through for this new year.
May contentment be your companion. Once in a comic strip, I think it was Lil' Abner, one character had a cloud of gloom that went with him everywhere. My wish is for such an ever present cloud of contentment to accompany you through your days. Such contentment would not hamper efforts to improve your own or others situations, nor interfere with hopes and dreams, but would increase your vitality. That cloud would wash away the reproaches of "might have beens" vanish the "what if's". You could reassure your consciousness that the roads you traveled, the decisions you made, were the best for you at the time, knowing what you then knew and having abilities you then had.
I wish for you a purpose, a plan for your days, and the energy and determination to be active, not just re-active, so that what you do, in act or thought, can come from intent. That way, the turmoil of life can become more your own pace instead of an engulfing current. No matter what the physical handicaps and restraints, regardless of the conflicts in world affairs, among groups and individuals, I wish that your own purpose would be for the good of others and yourself.
I wish you a goodly measure of health, a reasonable amount of prosperity, and many, many smiles, both given and received in the coming year. Though I can't grant them in fact, I give them to you in fancy, and I pray to God you will be blessed in 2003 Happy New Year.