Behind the Puddle

If you had asked me at the beginning of the year what would change me, I probably wouldn’t have said, “A patio.” That would have been a strange answer. And yet, here we are. That’s the funny thing about looking backward.

We can identify turning points we never recognized while we were living them. At the time, something was simply happening. It might have been a decision, a conversation, a difficult day, a new routine, or a loss. It might have been a person arriving, someone leaving, or a chair placed outside overlooking a puddle. Then enough time passes, and we realize, “Oh. Something changed there.”

Today’s word is Reflection, and November seems like a natural time for it. The year isn’t quite over. There is still life left in it. But there is enough behind us now that we can begin seeing its shape.

I think we’re often asked to reflect in ways that feel suspiciously like evaluation. What did you accomplish? What goals did you reach? What would you do differently? What are you proud of, and what are you going to improve next year?

Those can be useful questions sometimes. But they can also turn a life into a performance review. I’m more interested in another question. Who am I now that I wasn’t when this year began?

Not better. Not worse. Different. Whether we intended to or not, we’ve been becoming all year.

Maybe we learned something. Maybe we became more tired, more patient, less patient, more certain, or less certain. Something we thought mattered enormously in January may barely matter now. Something we never thought about may have become central to our days.

Maybe we lost someone, met someone, forgave someone, or stopped trying to convince someone. Maybe we started asking for help or changed our mind. We might have changed our body, our routine, or what we believe we need. Some changes announce themselves, while others quietly accumulate.

That’s what happened behind the puddle. I didn’t sit down one morning and decide, “Today I will become someone who watches birds.” I didn’t decide to watch squirrels, turtles, or herons either. I certainly didn’t announce that I would begin assigning names and personalities to half the wildlife in the neighborhood.

That happened one ordinary observation at a time. I sat outside, and then I sat outside again. I noticed something, became curious, took a picture, and wrote something down. Then I looked again tomorrow.

Somewhere in those repetitions, the patio stopped being simply a place where I could access the backyard. It became a place where I could access something in myself. That wasn’t the plan. Some of the most important changes aren’t planned.

I think reflection helps us recognize those things. It doesn’t mean we have to turn every experience into a lesson. I’ve become increasingly suspicious of the idea that everything difficult must teach us something. Sometimes something terrible happens, and the appropriate conclusion is, “That was terrible.”

No inspirational ending is required. But even when an experience doesn’t contain a lesson, we may still discover that living through it changed us. That’s different. I don’t have to be grateful for what happened to recognize who I became while responding to it.

I can look back with honesty. There are things this year gave me and things it took. There are things I handled well and things I absolutely did not. There are things I would repeat and things I hope never happen again. There are also things I’m still trying to understand.

That’s a life. Reflection doesn’t require editing it into a better story. Maybe it simply asks us to turn around long enough to see where we’ve been. When we’re living forward, change can be difficult to notice.

We see ourselves every day. Our lives look mostly familiar from one morning to the next. The trees behind the puddle are much the same. One leaf changes, another falls, and another day passes. Nothing seems dramatic.

Then suddenly, I look at a picture from July and hardly recognize the landscape. Maybe that’s true of me too. I don’t necessarily feel dramatically different. I’m still me.

But I know things I didn’t know, and I’ve noticed things I didn’t notice. I’ve released some things and held tighter to others. I’ve become more comfortable with enough. I’ve grown more curious about ordinary life and more willing to let a puddle remain a puddle.

The year isn’t finished yet. That’s important. Reflection isn’t the closing chapter. It is simply a place along the way where we turn around and say, “Look how far we’ve already traveled.”

Then we face forward again. Not because we have everything figured out. We face forward because there is still more road. There is still more life left in the year.