Sixteen years ago I was 16. I recall thinking about how I would die young. I hoped for a long grand future, but I felt a certainty that I wouldn’t make it. Yet here I sit, 32 years old, looking back on my life. At 16, I was right, I wouldn’t survive to old age. My mistake was thinking I would face my physical death before 30. Instead, I died emotionally. Instead, I died mentally. The person I was at 16 has died and been reborn multiple times. I have stood on the edge of life, crippled with exhaustion, and been dragged away from certain death by loving people and my own determined desire for hope.

Today, however, I watched “Water Lilies” by Monet for a while at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. I say watched because as you breathe amd look the picture changes, different colors come to life. Earlier, I had watched the changing trees which blossomed with life. A bed of daffodils sat outside the museum, ringing out spring. I slowed down, my voice became calmer than usual. I spoke with the sweetness of love and kindness on my tongue. I truly felt love for all of creation.

There are things I’m developing and growing in my life. I’m expanding my limits and risking my all on how to love others better. This is 2019, this is 32 years of life and death and rebirth.

I have wandered far and wide. There is much left for me to see. It is yet a new birth with tomorrow to be lived. I accept it may also be a death of who I once was. However, the past lives should not be forgotten or we risk not learning from them. Then, we might risk to necessitate having to learn it again.

I am 32 years old and I live and love with unlimited potential and possibility.

The next chapter is starting, and so I will share it here, in hope the next person might wander even further.