Thankful Thursday – October 11th
So, what am I feeling thankful for today?
1) Existing.
2) Loving and caring and considerate and kind relatives and friends.
3) Interesting discussions.
4) Having the opportunity to visit various recording studios in my area and having the ability to play music that I enjoy and that brings pleasure and peace to others. It really is something I love to do, a part of who I am. Even though I will never be “famous”, it doesn’t matter. I am doing what I have always needed to do. It’s fantastic. 🙂
5) I am immensely grateful to have a second vehicle. Yesterday, the latch that closes the driver’s side door of my [little purple ’98] Neon, Sparky, broke. The steel is, quite literally, busted. The screws that held the internal latch mechanism in place are gone. I couldn’t do anything to fix it – I don’t normally carry tools around in my car.
I happened to be at a gas station when this happened, instead of on the highway. I would have been on the highway when it happened had I not stopped to get gas.
I decided to take a longer and slower route home, holding the door closed with my left arm the whole way. I can tell you, it was an adventure! 🙂 Almost swung out a couple of times, but I happen to have extraordinarily buff biceps for a woman. 😉 So, I made it home without incident.
Sadly, though, I found that there was nothing I could do to fix the door, even with proper tools. So, I am thinking that poor Sparky is getting close to the end of his life and this was his way of letting me know. (Yeah, I anthropomorphize my car, so what?) I’ve been with this little fella for nigh on twelve years, he’s been a part of my life longer than any of the people I currently know! So, that not-too-distant future parting does give me some sadness.
At the same time, though, it excites me that I might be getting a new (to me) car. Mostly because I have lately been enamored with old station wagons and I want to get one and learn how to take care of it on my own. A new adventure and many new learning opportunities will come to me as a result!
Sparky will be going in for some work tomorrow morning, so hopefully the door is salvageable… If not, Sparky will eventually be donated to a cars-for-charity program (my local one: http://www.cars4charity.com/, these are great programs folks)Â so that he can still be useful and giving even at the end of his life with me.
Most of all, though, I am feeling grateful to have survived so long in this world. I feel like I am finally understanding that my life so far has not been a “failure” or a “waste”. It just didn’t go like I wanted it to at the time. But, now that I’m this far in, I see that it has gone the way it needed to go for me to learn those lessons that I needed to learn. Those experiences and that knowledge make me a better person: a more loving, kind, thoughtful, sincere, caring, understanding, relaxed, free and open  person than I would have been otherwise.
I am grateful to be alive, and I am thankful for having had an imperfect and painful past life. Because, though that hurt still affects me from time to time, the past stays in the past. The future can be what I want it to be. Now is always here and always the most important. Even if I don’t always understand the how, I finally understand the ‘why’.
Talk to you soon,
– Jane