New Year’s Myth of Eternal Return This is intended as a series of posts grouped around the idea of the New Year as a theme for cyclic change; in tackling this theme, I relate to famous religious and mythology scholar Mircea Eliade’s work on showing how traditionally, man has found meaning and strength in his relation with the sacred, higher dimension to life – man is not an accident, but his  existence wobbling in between chaos and order is sending ripples and impresses, affects the cosmos. Having forgotten this seems to be modern man’s “capital sin” – from here, the overly materialistic and technologized world without humanity of our days is throwing us into personal distress and social chaos – we live in the best of times ever, but depression and neurosis have never been so high.

Starting from a series of personal, real-life events, I intend to go deeper into the “why” and the “what for” of it all – without sense and meaning life would lack the salt and the pepper that keep us going…

(1) A Farewell to 2014 – It’s Been A Rough Year…

Two days to go – ugh, what a year it has been! It started with my grandmother’s death on April 11, the day of the 77^th anniversary of her first-born son (my dad) – and what a gift it was to my dad from his mother! Then, on May 11, his name day, Sts *Constantine and Helena my father was taken to the hospital with a serious CVA – the next day he was to be diagnosed with lung and colon tumor and metastases.

Then it was my turn for a birthday gift: he passed away on Juy 13, two days after my anniversary. The next month my husband had a car crash that smashed two concrete light poles and tumbled the bullet-proof concrete cabin (used as a shelter for the army) some five meter away, and we had to gratefully take whatever remained of the car to the junkyard.  The very next day, exactly thirty-one hours later, at two in the morning, a phone call woke me up: my son crashed our other car on a 12m-high bridge; I went right on and felt quite elated when I saw that the side next-to the driver was totally crushed, but his side has managed to remain somehow whole. The only difference between remaining on that bridge and plummeting the 12 meters down were those last two enduring bars of the side fence, only 2cm-width each that remained in place at the point of collision.

Then my brother got a divorce, then my daughter. This one came just in: breaking news at Christmas. Now, I know I only have two choices: I can remain in those moments, or I can take them as facts of life and move on. I can choose to rationalize: my grandmother was 98, she left behind eight children, and a good number of grandchildren and grand-grandchildren spread all-around the world. I could also consider how she had good reasons to be proud of all of them, when she suddenly chose to go.

But hard as I try, my mind says (shaking its head): “Nahaa, not so fast!” when it comes to my father.  Already five month have passed by, but it still hurts . .. ughh… That’s why, I’m thinking that the best medicine I know of is letting it out, sharing the goods and the bads – so I intend to write down my impressions of our last month together (the only one, in fact, for the past thirty years) and share one of the hardest moments with which, sooner or later, life would want to confront us with.

About the other events, it’s somewhat “easier”. With the first accident, I lost a car, but I got to keep my husband –  whole and scathless. For the second, I’ve lost a few thousand dollars, but the Higher-Forum-Up-There decided that I deserved the immense favor to gift me with a safe, “not-even-scratched” son – for which I’m immensely grateful. What’s more, if I stare a little more into the bright side, it’ll become quite obvious that actually, things are more beautiful now than before, when I used to take them for granted in my life.

About my brother’s divorce – deep sigh – I’ll have to think that at times a separation is better than staying in sentenced for life. So, I guess, the same should be valid for my daughter too. And, secondly, it is because it hurts so much – I just realized that, by writing about it, I can work at and exorcise the pain.