Acceptance

As I write this, at about 9:30 p.m. Central European Time, I should be having a late dinner with my brother and his wife, together with their daughter and her family.  In Rome.  In Italy.

After, perhaps, one more concluding round of grappa, I would be heading for bed.  And I'd be anticipating boarding a 10 a.m. train the next morning to Pisa, with a connection through the Cinque Terre to Levanto.  Where a two week festa was to begin, in celebration of my birthday.

Instead, I am sitting at my computer in Seattle, having just filled out a form requesting a refund of my pre-paid railway fare.

Such are the vicissitudes of life, especially life under Covid-19.

Being usually a bit of a Pollyanna, I try to be upbeat about my dashed plans.  I mull over the frequently stated claim that most vacationers enjoy the pre-trip planning and the post-trip reminiscing and bragging more than they do the trip itself.  I understand the partial truth of this claim, but I'm not sure it's my own experience.  I like it all -- pre, post, and during!

But I also am receptive to the suggestion that was contained in the weekly email from our pastor, which I received yesterday -- which I received just as I was glumly recalling that I should have been somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.  He recalled that as a young man, he was an ambitious sort, in a priestly way -- always having some valuable mission that he wanted to accomplish.  His concept of the religious term "grace" was the help God gave him to complete whatever mission that he'd set out to accomplish.

On the other hand, anything which distracted from the work was a hindrance to my mission, and was clearly not grace. It took me many years—and more than a little pain—to recognize that one’s true mission is more often found in those things that we thought were distractions than in the work one had set out to do, and to realize that all of it—the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the painful and the comforting, the moments of success and the hours of failure—all of it is grace.

My mission -- a fun-filled fortnight on the Italian coast -- is a bit less exalted that the sort of missions to which the email referred.  But the manner in which I suspect I should react to the damnable "hindrance" thrown in my way by the pandemic may be somewhat analogous.

The roughly two years of planning for the celebration were fun.  I discovered -- well, it wasn't a novel revelation, I guess -- that I like being a travel agent, or a trip organizer.  So, yes, I did have the pleasure of that pre-trip planning to which the "frequently stated claim" adverts.  But more than that, I had the fun of being in constant contact with the thirty relatives and friends who were planning to meet me in Levanto.  Some of them I communicate with regularly, but many others I see or email very infrequently.  There were a couple of second cousins who I hadn't spoken to in decades, cousins who I was delighted to discover were interesting and funny.  (Hey, they're related to me -- how could they be otherwise?)  I learned a lot about the Cinque Terre and the Ligurian coast, and the interesting things that could be done in that area.  I read books I might not have read but for my planned trip.  I indulged in my enthusiasm -- well known by my tormented siblings since childhood -- of managing other people's affairs for them.  

In short, I didn't make the trip, but I enjoyed many of the pleasures of the trip.   

But more than that, I've learned once more that living life means accepting and valuing all aspects of it, "the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the painful and the comforting, the moments of success and the hours of failure."  I've learned once more that I can control what I can control, hopefully to the best of my ability, but I can't control everything.  And that acceptance of that fact is important.  "Man proposes, but God disposes," as the saying goes.  Or, if you prefer, Covid-19 disposes.  

So, I did the best I could, but I encountered what the Greeks would call the immutability of Fate.  I accept disappointment.  And I persuade myself that not getting what I want, when I want it, isn't always a bad thing.  It can be, if we let it -- as our parents would say -- character-building.   A "learning experience."

And, as the Mariners like to say, there's always next season.   We're now signed up for the same accommodations for May 2021.  Everyone still sounds enthused.  Will we be able to make it?  Will travel be safe twelve months from now?  I don't know.  But nothing would be gained by accepting defeat a year in advance.   

We'll do what we can.