2021 is the year of farewell

Read the Dutch version

This year I am little or not productive. Nothing comes out of my hands. I roam around, rarely meet people and the days are all the same.

“Are you happy?” I asked myself. I realize that I have a good life and that I feel happy. Yet there is something about this year that is very different from other years. This year is a year of saying goodbye.

Farewell to my younger brother who passed away, farewell to my best friend Szilvia who moved elsewhere, farewell to a friend in the Philippines who died in an accident, farewell to freedom and self-determination because of our world in the grip of a control war and through which I may also have to say goodbye to family and friends in the Netherlands and other countries I like to visit, because I am no longer allowed to visit them.

But also farewell to a powerful body that seemed tireless, but now makes me realize unequivocally that the years count twice. There is also a very strange farewell, namely the farewell to the future. The future is getting smaller and smaller. It's so strange to read and hear about things I won't experience again, when it makes so much sense that it's about that for me unachievable future.

I love to live and am so happy. “Then are you happy?” I ask myself. “Yes, I am happy.”: is the answer to that question. However, this year puts me to the test, because of all those times of saying goodbye!

Fortunately, in every sunrise I still feel the incentive and the desire to make something of it that day. It may be little or nothing at the moment, but I allow myself to do that.

© TrefMij November 2021