Down the Rabbit Hole

Islands and Connecting to the More

Blog City Feb 17th
Prompt: "If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough." Oprah Winfrey

This prompt is poignant for me this morning. It feels right that I should re-commit to blogging again today, with a prompt that is so aptly fitting for where I have been mentally lately. I think I have been burdened by my own doubts and perceived failures this past year. I learned that the career and future I was building wasn't what it seemed to be. I was building sand castles and didn't see the tide coming in until it was too late. I felt like it left my floundering about, trying to find something secure again. I kept looking at the choices my siblings made, and faulting myself for making different ones - from "buying" into a family business, hooking my one horse to a buggy that was destined to go off the rails.

I've been plagued by thoughts on how I should have been smarter, I should have seen through the false promises. I should have paid more attention, fought harder, been more...always more. I still am struggling but I am trying also to see that my choices have brought us blessings. My choices enabled us to have a beautiful home, to be healthy and have good quality of life. We get to take a family vacation once a year, our bills are paid and we are able to enjoy a full life. I may not have built the legacy I wanted to for my daughter, but I've worked hard. I'm been successful in my own right. I think Oprah is right, if a person sends time lamenting what they don't have...they will always feel unfulfilled. I'm trying to be the person who looks at their lives and sees accomplishments, not failures. Some days are easier than others.

Blogging Circle
Day 3014: February 17, 2021
Prompt: “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.” ― William James
Use this quote to inspire your blog entry.

I believe that one of the things this pandemic revealed in the basic human connections we all have. Isn't it always the case that something becomes more desirable once you take it away? For most everyone, we were all just going about, trying to love our best lives when the world changed overnight. Suddenly isolation was imposed and we had to severe some of our most beloved and important connections to our friends and families. It because clear that the world was really "in this together". I think of the scenes of the people singing together off separate balconies in Italy. We might be all islands but we crave that sense of connection, we reach for it when it is pulled from our grasp. This quote by Williams James is really the perfect representation of the world in this time of COVID.