"52 and Counting!"

I have just realized that that as this is my 52^nd posting on Nudgings and so it marks the end of one year.

I started out a year ago for a perfectly selfish reason: I needed to challenge myself, to clarify my thoughts, to explore them and see where they went. So a huge thanks to everyone who has accompanied me on this journey, to those I know and to my Facebook friends who I have never met. You have made this last year exciting and worthwhile. Your comments, whether shared online with everyone, or privately with me, have often led me to somewhere new.

I began this journey, just like most journeys are begun, with some trepidation. I wasn't sure I wanted to put my thoughts out there for everyone to read. I wasn't sure that I could write. I wasn't sure that I had more than one or two musings to share. When asked at that time why anyone would want to read my blog, my answer was that I had no idea! Now I might reply that my musings attempt to integrate the spiritual with the physical, the ‘why’ with the ‘how’ of living, and by doing so, to ‘nudge’ the reader along with me on that journey.

Whenever we start out on any of the chapters of our lives, whether larger like higher education, a career, marriage and parenthood or smaller like moving to a new place, starting an exercise program, or even opening a new book, we never really know where it is going to end up. But one thing is for sure, we will never be the same as we were before we started.

Our experiences make us who we are. We are all familiar with the saying 'You can’t understand someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes’. It is so tempting to try to understand and judge the actions and the behaviors of others in light of our lived experience. And yet their experiences, even the experiences of those we live with, are not the same as ours. And so I believe we are called to listen, to empathize, and to respond, without personalizing to ourselves, and without judgement, but with compassion.

It is my hope that those things that have ‘nudged’ me to see reality in a new light, will also ‘nudge’ you, not to the same place of course, but somewhere that you have never visited before, that they might help you make some connections and perhaps understand yourself and your motivations just a little better.

Thanks for reading!!!!!

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NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

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