ADVENTURE Beyond Effort

My birthday was a few days ago, an event unmarked by any focused marketing strategy -- Sweet Sixteen, 21 Turn Up, the Dirty Thirty, Forty is the New Thirty, and so on.  This year, I worked my scheduled shift, got smoked out by my colleagues and went to a lovely dinner party at my friend Brian Hockaday's place.  There were steamed crabs and corn on the cob.  Salad with mint and this simple Chilean sauce made from mayonnaise and freshly squeezed lemon juice.  There was wine and beer, champagne and a homemade liqueur from Slovenia (?), plus a tasting tour of digestifs. In other words, another day made wonderful through acceptance.  At the start of the dinner, Brian's sister Connie shared a notable birthday tradition. Two questions, normally placed at the beginning of the calendar year, but personalized through birth date:  What do you want to leave in the past?  What to want to embrace in the year to come?  Perhaps it was the Rosé, but mostly it was a chance to vocalize the kind of stuff that's bigger than a wish-blown-with-eyes-closed, secret. I'm leaving effort without return, behind - not as a mechanism of self involvement or narcissism but as a chance to conserve energy.  And I'll need all the energy I can muster for the adventure.