Are we there yet?

I just discovered a draft of something I meant to post.... I like to have a photo to accompany posts and didn't have one at that moment I guess. But now I do.


Jonah has a line from a little song from when he was small that goes " Are we there yet? Not yet!" So my thoughts for today revolve around beginnings and endings and journeys.

Beginnings
You can say that every day is a new beginning, a chance to start over. But sometimes the stuff from yesterday isn't completed. Like the dishes that got left in the sink because there was some evening activity that you were rushing out the door for, and you were too tired when you got home. So you gotta deal with those, before you make any more meals. So, New Day sometimes meaning cleaning up the stuff from the Day Before. Just like life - you can make a fresh start, do new things, try a new job, but I think still carrying with you the junk you don't really need. Like old ways of doing things. Or old ways of thinking. I appreciate seeing things from a new perspective - it helps dust out the cobwebs. It means discarding something, though. Letting go. Hard to do. It means making choices, maybe even difficult ones. And every time you think you've arrived, you realize you still have a ways to go, to improve, to love more, to be more, to reach out more. "Are we there yet? Not yet..."

Endings
So a new beginning also means a brand-new ending. Yesterday was tough for Elijah. Grade 2 was ending. A whole new level of realization creeping into his consciousness, I think. Too many good-byes. Luckily at this age, they're mostly just "so long, see ya soon."

Journey
Wow, is that ever an over-used word these days. The trouble with over-used words though is that they work to describe a lot of things. I think we use it best to convey a sense of experiencing something over time: there was a point of departure, there was the time in the middle when you got used to the idea or began to go with the flow, and then there was the ending, brief and finite or long and arduous, but nevertheless things somehow wrapped up. Over the next while I want to explore this idea of a journey in all the things that I am involved in: travel (a literal journey to France), learning, teaching, children, illness, relationships, scrapbooking and photography.