The Sound of the Chimes at New Year’s

Waggling her finger at my nose she smacked her lips a few times to dislodge the dryness of age and said, “No, and no no! Don’t be afraid to have experiences. Experiences help you solve problems"

Someone - can’t remember who - said this once and it stuck in my brain.”
“I have often wondered if a good problem solver simply hangs her many
experiences, like chimes, in the breeze of the problem at hand and then
listens ever so carefully for a sound...what causes a particular set of
chimes to ring remains a mystery to me."

"Yes, somehow it works," she murmured as she resumed her knitting.

Lost in a reverie of the past, my old friend rocked in place, with me wondering if she was trying to remember who had given her this advice or if she had forgotten that I was sitting there in that single other chair near the fire. I let my glance go to her every now and then wondering if she wanted to add something to her thought and in the silence my own mind wandered. I tried to envision a world in which we could each hang our experiences on the line, let the breezes of our problems flow around them, and then listen for a chime to ring telling us how to solve our problems. How would that work? Does it work?

I’ve always believed that we had an undefined insight and intuition that when we choose to use it can pull us out of the bottom feeding position into a place of brighter light. I liked the picture that played in my mind of my experiences all lined up and waving in the breeze – of whatever problem I had and suddenly a chime of remembrance and solution would sound and show me how to make things pure and simple once more. And don't our problems come like breezes – all is calm and then suddenly the air around us is disturbed and whorling, like the sea when the air becomes heavy and the wind riles the waves.

What experiences should I consider putting on the clothesline of my life? The Alzheimer’s Death of my mother, for one. The courage of my father in his last battle and his words of comfort and love to me my whole life. Oh yes, grab the corner of a hankie here; loss is a terrific teacher. Add to that the experiences of every day of our lives, dealing with the broken bones and dreams of family life and inventing and reinventing ways to make life richer for ourselves and those we love. The experiences of my broken dreams, my failures, my errors of judgment are hung there too – even those I prefer to keep private. The largest experiences that need to be hung high and dry are those options I chose to ignore, those experiences I chose not to experience and those things I neglected to do. Sadly, these are unchangeable. I These are opportunities that are lost and gone forever.

What experiences caused me to turn to writing and reading? I can remember the feeling that I was no longer accomplishing anything with my life – my children were grown, my retirement loomed, my parents were gone and it almost seemed that I was no longer of any importance to the world. Grab a corner of this experience and hang it up good and high for it is perhaps the most profound life-altering experience of my life – I discovered that my worth is found in my self – not in what others think of me. The problem of my later years was solved with this ringing of the chimes of experience, and I began to work to make myself something more than I was. If I was to live, should I not fashion that life to its best and highest meaning? I wanted no life of quiet desperation.

My old friend was right. The experiences of my life had shaped the solution to many of my problems. One can sometimes almost hear the chimes when the light of clarity appears. It is a glorious sound!

May the chimes of clarification and illumination ring for you many times in the new year!

Happy New Year!