Today I was listening to chatter about a reunion which a new acquaintance had attended last week - a group of old friends who had not all been together for 30 years. She described one gentleman; "Well, he used to be rather eccentric," and when I asked if he had mellowed in the intervening years she said, "Not really - I suppose we weren't terribly surprised." And that's the truth of it, isn't it?
We bob along in the waters of life through all manner of different landscapes. And where you are can be terribly jolly, or sometimes rather difficult, but you learn that whichever way it is, it generally passes. And in the ever changing vista before you, the one thing that remains pretty much constant is you.
Did I always know this? Yes, I think so, on some level at least. As I watch my children leave our family vessel and begin to journey under their own steam, my wish for them is that when they look at themselves in the mirror, that they know they are decent people, that they behaved with integrity and for them never to feel shame in who they are.
And all of the rest of it is pretty much icing on the cake.
It's been a while. But it is lovely to be back.
