8:32pm On A Tuesday…
Ayesha G. Shenk, M.A.
Live Meaningfully – By Ayesha G. Shenk, M.A.
What’s your life look like at this moment in time at 8:32p.m. on a Tuesday…?
Are you just putting the kids to bed?
Just finishing after a long day of work?
Cleaning dishes from dinner?
Out for an elongated happy hour with colleagues?
Sitting by the hospital bedside of someone you love?
Staring into space while trying to remember why you married this someone you used to love?
Dreaming of a better day?
Wishing this day would never end?
Tonight, after spending hour after hour in different moments with people, I found myself having to walk through the AdventHealth ER after work. It turns out it’s all fine. I’m fine, my family is fine, we’re all blessed… but there are a remarkable number of people, from all walks of life, who are struggling.
There is grief and fear and love and hope all flooding the halls of hospitals day after day. There are the anxious parents holding their child’s ‘booboo,’ the exhausted caretakers who have seen the walls of this waiting room far too many times, there are the massive traumas and the minor stitches and everything in between. Here meets the intersection of the rookies and the veterans in a game neither ever wished for nor anticipated they would play.
At any given 8:32 on a Tuesday, life and love and good or bad fortune collide and, though it may seem like an insignificant time and another notch in the belt of the staid routine you have created, it is not for someone somewhere.
Someone is under grave stress. Someone’s heart is breaking. Someone hasn’t slept in days. Someone’s fearful for the ones they love. Someone’s falling in love! At this moment in time, anything and sometimes unfortunately, everything is possible.
It’s been a hard week. I have had some heavy cases, one of my husband’s dear friends is not doing well, we’re running in a million directions to make sure all the kids activities/needs/concerts/games/attitudes/appointments/etc… are attended to. Sleep has been fairly elusive. And, I’m sure, I’ve allowed things to get the best of me. And then, I remember what 8:32 on a Tuesday looks like for so many people and I am recalibrated.
Don’t get me wrong, we are entitled to feel what we feel: fatigue, stress, angst, frustration, fear, hurt, etc… And just because someone else has it harder at the moment, doesn’t mean that those feelings aren’t real. However, without perspective and gratitude some of those feelings and some of those weeks could swallow you up whole.
January begins a whole new year and offers a whole new view of the world and a fresh new beginning to make changes and narrate the way our 2020s will be. A new year offers the ability to make certain things a priority. I’ve had ‘coordinate date to make meal at Ronald McDonald House’ on my list of to-dos for more consecutive months than I am proud to admit. There are so many things my highest and best self yearns to do, yet I am just as guilty of being ‘sucked into the vortex’ of life and find myself running just to keep up.
The new year 2020 offers the chance to have 20/20 vision on our lives. What matters? Who are you? How are you going to manifest an accurate reflection of the things that matter and the You who is true?
Wishing you and all those dear to you a truly joyful New Year. May it offer you crystal clear vision and direction with acuity and grace.
Till the next time,
Be Well; Live Meaningfully.
Ayesha
Ayesha G. Shenk, M.A. practices at 2150 Park Avenue North as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and can be reached at www.livemeaningfully.net or 407-796-2959.
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