Before I sat down to write this post, I took some time to read my previous year’s post, Thirty-three.
I can still feel the tension and anticipation from those words. I was definitely in a feisty mood, ready to take on the challenges that were ahead of us. Then a wonderful spring followed, crowned by a most beautiful day in April, when Laura and I got married.
The past twelve months have been a rollercoaster, where both of us have felt the widest range of emotions we could remember: from mounting stress to welcome relief, from pure joy to utter sadness, from the incredible satisfaction of fully living in the here and now, to sudden concerns about what is yet to come.
From April to August we were in a bubble of bliss, culminating in our arrival in Santiago after almost a full month of Camino. It has been an unforgettable experience. For a few days, we feasted on that feeling of intimate happiness which the Camino can so easily provide. I eerily knew at the time that we had to hang onto that feeling for as much as we could, because it would not last forever.
And last forever it did not.
It’s funny how Autumn is called “Fall” in American English. The word creates a picture in your mind: a big number of leaves falling onto the ground from a beautiful tree, yellow, red, and soon to become lifeless.
Falling leaves and fallen hopes: this is how Fall 2024 turned out for us and our families.
From September onwards, we have been handed out a series of stark reminders that we must take advantage of any opportunity we can to experience happiness and create good memories. These will be the life jackets we will have at disposal when, and not if, we will find ourselves amidst stormy waters.
Through fall and winter we kept on walking, however, without wavering.
Sometimes you need to focus on the big objective on the horizon, in order to find the motivation to keep walking. At other times, it’s the other way around. You might not particularly like the idea of what is on the horizon, and you need to put your head down to focus only on the immediate circumstances around you. Focus hard to make sure you put your right foot in front of the left one, and then the left foot in front of the right one.
Although it might sound silly, I am not particularly surprised to say that work has actually been a bit of a helpful distraction lately. I am actively enjoying many of my current duties and projects, which helps quite a lot with coping with everything else going on. I often wonder what my previous self would say about that, with his gypsy ideas of walking around the world and rejecting the “bourgeoisification” of my future life.
But that does not matter now.
Things change. People change.
The only thing that matters is that we are standing close to each other, and that we keep walking into better times ahead.