I got a message from J today, she is 62, lives alone on a horse farm in western Maryland. It was the kind of message that humbles and affirms me. She thanked me for the blog and for my insights into my life. She said she survived open heart surgery last year in part because of my writing about my own experience. She said she was alone without friends or family when she had her surgery, and also for the last three years after her divorce.

“At age 62,” she wrote, “I have come to realize I am a resilient woman with strength of character and enough optimism to keep myself independent and happy. The dog and I share a pleasant life as tenants on a small farm. Your writings have made me laugh as well as cry, your wisdom touches me profoundly and I am grateful for the technology that enables your writing to reach me and touch me  every day.”

I was grateful that the same technology sent her message to me, especially at the end of a week when I got many different kinds of messages. I was thinking about her message all day, it put me in a reflective mood. I wonder what J is like, I think I would like her, I think we could be friends. She has learned who she is and accepted who she is, she has been to the other side of the world and back, she has found herself and her own strength, she seems at peace with her life. A rare and beautiful thing,  she is ahead of me, ahead of most of us.

She is a strong woman.

I hope she does not ever give up on life or love.

Her message reminded me of another message, this one from a book on mythology. It said we cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

People sometimes watch the bad news of the world and tell me they don’t wish to bring children into it. I wonder if they have read their history, when has the world ever been free of sorrow and trouble.

When we talk about the world’s problems, we are asleep, we are looking in the wrong place for answers, we are searching in the wrong direction.

The world is perfect, the world is a terrible mess.

I am not going to speak ill of it, or change it, or even a small part of it.

I can only work on my own small existence, straighten out my own life.

The world has always been a mess. It will always be a mess, that seems to be the nature of human existence.  I never lose hope, but I hope I never run from the reality of the world. Acceptance is the key.

I think J has discovered that as well, I think that is her message.