I made a new year promise (I don’t make resolutions) to start up a weekly post again. These I will call Reflections.
So on what will I reflect in this first such post of 2020? I considered several topics but eventually settled on Community.
When one works long hours, it is challenging to engage actively within the Community in which one lives. At least that’s how I saw things throughout my working life. Others, more organised or with more self-discipline may well have achieved a better work / Community life balance. Now I am retired, I am much enjoying playing a more active role in my local Community.
Volunteering helps as it brings engagement with all ages, and with people of many positions and varied backgrounds. It brings home to me how closed a circle business life can be. Yes, I met people in my work life, but while their roles and organisations differed in many ways, we were simply varying shades of the same colour. Working to a common goal; deadlines, forecasts, reports, budgets, cost reduction, business improvement and meetings. Meetings upon meetings upon meetings.
Now my time is spent in enlightening, informing, encouraging, illuminating. There are no longer goals to achieve but interests to explore, experience to share, information to convey, and new knowledge to acquire. Everything from phonics to Victorian skirt lifters via Pirates.
And I now find I say good morning, afternoon and evening a lot. To complete strangers walking their dogs or out jogging or only taking the air. Including a gentleman of the road whom I occasionally encounter as he takes respite in the churchyard that I pass through on some of my walks. He asks nothing more of me than an exchange of pleasantries and a smile. He and I have taken very different routes in life to reach where we now are. Yet, it occurs to me as our greetings to each other ring in the air that maybe nowadays he and I are more kindred souls.
Reflections 