What got me through the weekend? Number one, honesty. When people asked me, "How are you?" I didn't give the stock reply. I said, "I'm going through a dark night of the soul." With my peeps, this was all it took to start a meaningful discussion in person, on the phone, or in an email. I wrote truthfully in my journal, and am doing my best to do so now here. Telling the truth somewhere, validating where you are "at," is crucial.
Number two, standing up and getting out. In this case, to an oasis in the wilderness, an unexpectedly good concert of medieval English and European music, with people in their 60's through 80's singing, playing crumhorns and viols and generally being exceptional musicians. They aren't dead yet, and neither am I. This "MMus in historical musicology from the University of London" perked way up, validated in another way.
Lastly (and this is where being an Aquarian mystic comes in handy), the bigger picture. I've had kind of a joke with myself for a while, that back in 1955, the Divine One (God/Goddess/Universe/Source) sat me down and said, "Have we got a job for you!" I was to break ground in areas that were unthinkable in the 1950's, being a woman who would never marry, live with a man or have any significant other, never have children, or even become a nun. I would explore the post-monotheistic world, live much of the time in a post-capitalist dimension, and of course, be an American woman trying to sing English church music. There must have been a really exceptional ethereal gin-and-tonic involved, because I thought this would be jolly good fun, and signed on the dotted line. Fast forward about 63 years to the other night, exhausted, battered and down again to my last $10, and I just couldn't see what I was thinking when I said "yes" to this laundry list of impossibilities. And yet...the world has shifted in all these areas, not due just to me but to hundreds, maybe thousands of people doing the impossible jobs they signed up for. Somewhere deep in my being, I can feel a heavenly "retirement" party starting to get into gear, because, darn it, I did my job and did it well! 10% of the time it was glorious, and about 90% if the time it was entirely too hard, but I'm not dead yet!
The cool thing is that I think I can take the lead on my post-retirement contract, and negotiate some new goals. Will that guarantee no future dark nights? No. But if I can hold onto friends, music, and the notion that I have already successfully accomplished the primary "jobs" I signed up to do in this lifetime, then the dark nights should be manageable. I dearly hope yours are too.
