You must give life meaning, I am reminded today. And it starts in the heart and the soul… What connects us as fellow human beings here.
Even if you don’t have family to celebrate with. Even if your family are the strangers walking along the promenade like you this morning with their coffee and breath steaming out, walking their dogs or with children in tow, fishermen gathered in tradition behind a truck bed baiting their hooks with a fire in the barbecue pit going for warmth, and the woman out with her broken leg hobbling along on a knee scooter, and another with palsy and crutches greeting me good morning, and then the far-too-old man alone with his teacup dog looking straight on at me, seeing me, and it startling me to be seen as I am, a young woman alone on this crisp, holiday morning without her family, without anyone, smiling though, seeing and being seen, embracing whatever this is to be part of the human family… however strange and haphazard, and broken and awful, at times.
There is a certain feeling of togetherness that fuses in the ether on days like this — holy, electric days — where by some unseen power we can forgive more easily, be more easily forgiven, and, even if we’re alone, we belong.
