Entry Penned Beginning
Wednesday December 31st 2025 C.E
10:01 GMT+11
New years eve, by the Gregorian calendar at any rate. My family rarely celebrates the regular New Year, ours traditionally begins a little later as we spend 12 days in a sort of limbo period meant for reflection on what has been and what is to come.
This year we are having a bit of fun with it though, and it ties nicely, in my brain at least, to some thoughts I have had rattling around in my brain for a while.
The custom would be to look back at the past year, do a recap sort of a thing and so on but this year has been big, it has seen so many changes and new things and it has been about forward rather than backwards.
So my thoughts are a little esoteric and probably hard to follow but all the same I feel like writing them out.
I like my life; it might seem strange to say it like that but I do. Sure the planet is on fire, we are on the brink of a world war and the nazi’s are trying to rise again but these are just circumstances, things I can’t directly effect. My life within these circumstances is good, I have a roof over my head, food on my table, a family that I love and who loves me, a family forged and chosen to mutually make our lives better even if the circumstances around them are bad.
“A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe. “
-Sir Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
So bearing in mind that I like my life it leads to thinking about Auld Lang Syne; those I have lost along the way, the folks who I refer to here and there as having been uninvited or uninvited themselves from my life, the things that could have or arguably should have, been done differently in my life both by others and myself.
“…every blow of the hammer will serve to shape your being. Every drop of water wrung from you will temper and strengthen your soul.”
-Margaret Weis, SoulForge
Would I be the same person, had I not lived the life I lived? Certainly not. So many of the skills I have developed I developed because I had to, and those skills have let me help those I love when they needed it. So much of the pain and difficulty I have gone through has given me the perspective and understanding that has shaped my life; I would not be who I am, I would not be with the people I am now.
So I face the reality that were time travel possible, and we can ignore causality and the grandfather paradox and other temporal inconveniences, I would still not choose to change a thing. I wouldn’t even want to tell myself to hold on because it gets better; I would not wish to endanger what I have now by giving myself back then hope.
Hope cannot be weighed or measured, it might exist no where but the most private part of my soul, and yet perhaps that would be enough to alter the a future I would not wish to change. I look at my life and I am content that this is the best possible outcome for myself and those I love given the circumstances beyond our control.
To put in the parlance of a kid who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s; “Did you do your best? Then that’s what matters isn’t it?”
“You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
What does that mean for my past then, both the things I regret doing and those things I begin to believe should not have been done to me?
I don’t need to be grateful to those who have hurt me, to my abusers, to those who decided they were my enemy or worse those who decided I was their duty. I do not get to excuse my own decisions, but I will stand beside them. I did the best I could do at the time, where I have fallen short I have tried to learn and do better and ultimately I would change nothing, because whatever harm I have done I would not risk what I have to undo it.
“All of us hope for a little redemption, whether we deserve it or not.”
-Sir Terry Pratchett, Snuff
My redemption is my kids, my redemption is my family and the life we have together and are building. I would not, and do not, expect those who I have hurt to make space for me in their lives and I hope that beneath the pain there is something positive from our interactions, even if neither of us ever see it that way.
Those who have done wrong by me get the same. No place in my life or that of those I love and who love me; I do not wish ill to (most) of them, simply peace away from me and mine.
I do not need to forgive, I am not who I am and have the life I do because of your actions but rather despite it. Perhaps it was from your treatment I learned certain skills, perhaps it was from the despair you drove me to that my Lady reached out to raise me but you get no credit for that, no redemption.
“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
So today I think not about what might have been, not what I might have done differently or what others might have done differently by me; instead I look at my life as one whole. Not chapters but a story, one that continues on and will, I believe, outlive me as those who come after me remember me and speak my name.
“To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin, Gifts
I have tried to be the best Rob O’Wayreth I can be, no matter the circumstances surrounding me, no matter the choices of others. Sometimes the choices of others have left my fewer options, sometimes I have not had the strength to change a circumstance and sometimes I have not been clear on who I am enough to act well in a situation; but this is my story and I write it as I wish.
So as I look back over the story of my life to date, more than 40 years lived on three continents, and I think on those whose paths were beside mine for a while.
There are those who drifted away as their paths took them in a different direction, those I have learnt from and those I have taught, those who felt the need to dance in the light of unnecessarily burning bridges and those who never understood the chasm between us was of their own making.
We may well never meet again, and that is likely for the best, but
I’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for the sake of auld lang syne
-Robert James-Noonan O’Wayreth
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