What's Missing?

Tuesday August 18th, 2026 noon. Just finished lunch and I was sittting here thinking about what exactly I have been missing in this period of trial and sorrow. This morning, I spoke with my brother in Philadelphia. I think there is an invisible kind of radio wave whereby siblings might feel that there is something they should know and get in contact with another sibling.

I brought him up to date on my sad state of affairs, my heart trouble, my dead pets, our West Virginia brother's diagnosis of eye melanoma. Meanwhile, I had contacted all my most communicative friends to find out which one had been telling me about someone they knew who had undergone treatment for this very thing. It was Nancy and she told me her next door neighbor had melanoma of the eye and had radioactive seeds implanted in his eye and had been cured. It was good news.

Telling my brother all the things that had happened caused me to admit I was depressed. He said, "Now you know how I feel." And it is true. Now I could empathize with his apathy and his gloom. He stays in all day and gets high and watches tv. When he tells me, I alway ask him to get outside and go for a little walk and to try gummies instead of smoking because smoking is so bad for his arteries and heart. I know he won't but I have to try. I called him later and left a message for him to look on YouTube for "7 minute chair tai chi for old people." I tried it yesterday and it was quick and easy and I am going to do it every day.

While I was sitting here, after eating my lunch of crackers and tuna salad, I realized that I felt a little better today. I had taken a short walk at a local park, Proprietor's Park, down on the Delaware River. In the beginning of the summer, when I could harly walk, I took to driving down there with my dog, Uma, and walking from the car to the statue, around, and back to the car, about 1000 steps. There was a bench at the statue where I could stop and sit when I needed to in the beginning. After a week, I was able to walk the longer path along the river and afer a week of that I was able to go further along that path, about 2000 steps - the point being that there was alway improvement.

Maybe the chair tai chi, maybe the walk, but for whatever reason, maybe TIME, I felt better after lunch today. I have my car back and my second tire situation resolved. And I began to wonder, what it was that felt better and what it was that I had been missing when I was depressed. It came to me that it was a sense of happiness in myself. Not a happiness from an outside experience but an inner sense of just feeling good inside myself. That had been missing and in its place had been a feeling of doom and sadness, loneiness and pointlessness.

Whatever helped me, walking, chair tai chi, or time, I am grateful to have had a short flush of that good feeling and it gives me hope that the fulltime sense of happiness in myself will return at some point. It is a reminder to me, however, that it is best to try to get moving and not to just sit steeped in sadness. The bigger world outside is a tonic, even taking a car ride to the park is a window opening on to the big world and sky and the healing powers of air and trees and space.

Sorry I have spent so much time on my inner workings and not on activities or bigger ideas but perhaps this is what was needed, if not to you, definitely to me. And maybe it has helped someone also struggling to get over a series of blows.

'Happy Trails to You until We Met Again!

wrightj45@yahoo.com