“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take? she asked.’Where do you want to go? was his response.”I don’t know,’ Alice answered. “Then, said the Cat,  ‘it doesn’t matter” – Lewis Carol, Alice in Wonderland.

Thanksgiving marks a fork in the road for me.

I see light up ahead of me and my life. The coronavirus vaccine is due to come out in December, and Donald Trump will be sparing us his foot-stomping and pouting sometime in January.

I see a great window opening up, flooding the dark days with light.

I never took seriously the notion that Donald Trump could take over our country; he doesn’t have the stomach or the will for that.

But I do feel like I’ve been stuck in a small room with a surly pouting, whining, and sour adolescent, millions of them, in fact. I hear the sound of stomping feet in my dreams.

I guess I have. They sounded like a billion bees, buzzing all around my head.

All-day long, pundits and readers and worriers caution me not to relax. But he has so many followers. But the Republicans are eager to keep Joe Biden from being successful. But he might run again in 2024. But millions of people will believe that Biden stole the election.  But what if people don’t take the vaccine. But look at all the damage he has done and will do. Look at how the rest of the world is laughing at us.

Nuts to them all. I could care less what people are saying about us or what the Republicans might do next year.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light,” cautioned Aristotle. I chose to see the light, not imagine more darkness.

I’m not getting on that train. I’m grateful our election was not stolen. I’m eager to see the new vaccines. I’m not a psychic; I can’t predict the future and have never predicted it accurately when I tried.

That’s the amazing thing about the future. It is simply not predictable. There is no need for me to fill in the blanks with more gloom.

We are, in fact, at a crossroads, a fork in the road. In my life, every major difficulty I have ever faced is a fork in the road. I have to choose which path I will take, head down, towards failure, or breakthrough, towards meaning and success.

My life is full of choices. I face choices every day of my life, and at every crossroads, I have a choice. Those are the decisions that shape lives.

Our sad, bitter, and the sometimes frightening year is coming to a close, and I see the universe open up a bit to give another chance to the wretched human beings who have made such a mess out of our world.

The crossroads shout out to me; they tell me that this time marks the place of emergence in which a new kind of opportunity opens up and presents itself to us.

I feel an opening in the universe; I hear the better angels calling us to wake up, get up, and live. Take it or leave it.

I don’t really care to hear about all the difficult challenges the next year could bring. Life is always full of difficult challenges; there are no free rides. Why do these people pretend that they know when they have never known?

Helen Keller said the best and most beautiful things in the world could not be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that what lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Inside of me, I cling to my own version of faith. I believe every day can be better than today, every year better than this one.

Everyone gets a choice about what is next for us. We know what we are, but we have no idea what we might be.

I will greet this holiday with open arms and trust and bow to the future. Everywhere is crisis and mystery.

(I dragged Maria out into the bitter cold to test the night shooting on my new Iphone 12 Pro Max. This photo was taken in the dark with no flash, just an outside floodlight way up on a wall. She was a good sport but guilt-tripped me all night.)