Here I am, being met with a Circumstance. And though it isn't my own to personally bear, I feel the weight of it all the same. My first thought is that this is a worrying thing; that I should ready myself with at least some semblance of strength - one where I would hold myself firm, and tough, and steady. But I walk behind the person who bears the Circumstance, and he cracks a joke. The next person whose eyes I meet, who knows the Circumstance for what it was, too, cracks another. Her face lights up with the very hint of a smile and it is telling. I see you, it says. Everything is going to be okay. And it is in this simple exchange, that what was once seemingly serious and a thing to draw out a tough exterior for, I find myself beginning to consider what it really was: a circumstance, rightfully of significance at its own, but one which had not so big a weight attached to it as I had first thought.

So I returned the smile, feeling lighter for all that had been made so and with it thinking to myself how we could all use a little bit more light here.   

In looking back to what I've learned from 2019, I find that it means to sift through memories from a kaleidoscope of days - days that look like this: cups of tea taken in second’s to begin each day anew; frantic scribbles of notes on paper in pen, tucking them in between the pages of a growing journaling book; making heart-song the words to gilmore girl’s and lessons and memories of nora ephron films; trading wednesday nauseas for weekend plans and fear for courageous bursts; learning to unlearn the certainties of expectations and to embrace what has become the end of a four-years hum I have so long leaned on to - and to come out of it finding, unspooling in their midst, the realisation that often, it’s the imperfect days that I love the most. Days I find myself stumbling into out of best laid plans; days I could never have dreamed up in the way they have so perfectly come around. 

It all comes back to this: that what I am searching for is not a thing in and of itself, but a feeling.