resolution

Last night, I gave a hearty “good riddance” to 2017.

The year was awful, in so many ways–not just for me, I know, but I can speak only of my own reactions to outside events, and my own personal experiences.

While many others resisted, and admirably so, I went so far as to resist life entirely. The outside world seemed to become cruel, both bafflingly futuristic and antediluvian–embracing the very qualities in human beings that I thought the modern world had allowed me to escape, but using technology to manipulate the weary masses and terrorize those who dared be other. I could speak, but where I had found power in my words for so long, I felt trampled this year by dollar signs.

My freedom came behind my own closed doors. Closed off. Lonely, but not loveless, I explored my private world.

Much more time for some comforts I had forgotten. Fur, food, fuzzy socks. Netflix, not net stockings.

I thought, about what to do next, of course. But also about the long forgotten things. I me-tooed, reheard the racist rants of lore, looked down when they kicked me. I let them kick me. I wondered why.

I wallowed in this, a little, and reconsidered a few things that matter to me.

I name them now.

Nature, and the ability to explore it, marvel at it, and be a part of it.

As a part of nature, our own sustenance–our food–and where we get it, how we get it, what we eat, and how it nourishes us and makes us whole.

Health, and the radiant ability to live life fully, whatever we may have brought with us on our bodies in this world, whatever accidents our time on earth may bring us

Connection, and our ability to communicate with others and broaden our worldview, through words, through art, through music, through kindness, through desire.

Love, which is an essential part of everything else I have listed, but less explicably so.

My resolution is to remember all of these things I cherish, and to embrace them–more.