Welcoming the New Year...

When the New Year seems the only thing new in your life, perhaps it is time to relax, and reflect on the good times in your life. Obviously every year is no longer a great adventure waiting your handling of the good times to come, like the years before when life was a gift from god (or nature) you shared in common with your fellow human beings. Now it is the "is the cup half full or half empty" time of your life beginning, or being postponed until you are ready to face that day.
If you are ready, and would like a little helpful musings of that moment, by someone who decided at nineteen his glass permanently full read on... At nineteen I was ready for forever to begin. I was happy. I was young. I was alive and hey, isn't that what living is for? Just to be alive a wonderful thing to enjoy?
Life stretched out before me like time to spend on enjoying everyday possible, for life did not end in a grave to me, but was our gift as God's creation to enjoy from birth to forever.  Life, my birthday suit especially, as a gift from God in His image, little did I know then, or know much now, what part of our humanity is in His image (mind, body or spirit, or maybe all three?). Life was fun, I enjoyed being human, and did not yet know all the responsibilities of an adult, with their needs to be supplied, by anyone not choosing a life of service to God, as either priests or nuns, but like an idiot, I dropped out of college, became homeless, and unemployed. Was life trying to tell me something?
Soon life was not the party scene I had enjoyed for the past nine years of idle pleasures and indulgences, but then was a running balance sheet of bills and their paying, or doing without these billable necessities like food, clothing and housing. Life became neglected by me for nine years and was not embraced at nineteen as necessary to spend human, at least not alive...
Schizophrenia gripped me with its symptoms and detachment from the life ongoing around me for a reality that seems to exist only in my head.
In this alternate reality there was His Majesty God, His creations with their gifted children and me, someone who can dream and wish things were different but remained the same anyway. Life went on around me full of people like me I did not know (yes I even had a messiah complex for awhile), with empty hands, full hearts and nothing of value to anyone, not even myself.
My father, who has passed onto the mystery beyond the gave, gave me his single room rent controlled occupancy unit in The Village in Manhattan (little did I know what a luxury this apartment was, being it was only a room to me my father gave me while I was wondering about his offer to me of rent for a Bowery hotel room or a bed in a Bowery bed/housing center). I can only guess what went on in his mind, or how I must of looked, puzzled over what to choose. Of course, like an overgrown retard, I took the room without much thanks never realizing I was changing both of our lives. His to resuming a life He had outgrown, with years of employment in the same job, with good enough pay to provide his humble wants and needs, and me, from growing up and aware life is not a party but a position in a team of community in nature, where everyone contributes or feeds from, in our western civilization. Little do I know how life would have shaped me then, if dad had not made the call when others sent me away, no more the wiser I was not a spiritual entity, at least not yet, but a flesh and blood enough human to need things regularly supplied, or they would not last even three days, without water.
So my life went on, guided by dad to get a job, he did not volunteer the rent or food and other needs, but used their necessity to coax me to the normal life I was not sane enough to know was there, beyond the nose on my face, waiting for me to join the working class, or skilled labor class, if I used some time to grow more valuable to community than just my labor,
For twenty five years I lived out of touch anything or anyone lived a life worth supporting, let alone working to support, or pay for... Now fifty six years later, I could hate the way I damaged lives that cared about me by neglecting relationships, and not noticing all being done for me, because I only grew bodily, not mentally and wonder now even, do I see anything in a sane way?
So, as you ponder about your glass, do try to remember the life we live is not just ours to enjoy, but the product of labors, shared making things to share, by the business practice evaluation of the works done worth perhaps but shared just the same, the time and labor of each member.  Anyone not contributing is living on borrowed time, from the workers supported western civilization, where some hope to be every year, even if as undocumented laborers, as this life which some hate, and some take for granted, is not a gift like a pet rock, but a living "pet project" that needs regular feeding and proper caring for or will not be there much longer...
Just a few thoughts from one, who perhaps spent  too much time dreaming and living on insurance and otherwise charity the "west" can provide, but does not want to, I am slowly becoming more and more aware, as I try not to become the burden of my brother or sisters, I have been to now both my parents having moved back in with mom...
Training is in progress, to become able to support medical and other needs I share, with so many human beings, yes I have heard there are others out there, like me. Some even working their ass off to not become a burden. Little did I know.