Meeting a friend and former colleague for lunch today to celebrate her getting a new – and looong overdue – job was fun. What added to the mirth was the fact that it was $2 burger day at our lunch spot! What fun!
I’m quite happy that she gained much better employment; she deserves it. It was nice to learn that things are swell in some other areas of life too. At some point after she shared good news (and some tough lessons), I told her she had “mesa-ed.”
Her smile carried the momentum of the conversation, but the “What?” required me to explain.
Mesa-ed: (v) having reached a plateau. In this instance, it was metaphorical, of course, in that she’d been through some stuff for an extended period and now she was climbing.
I considered the word cresting, but that would imply the end of a climb and the impending descent. I wanted to avoid that. I wanted to convey something more, something enduring. Reaching the top of a mesa demands a considerable climb, much more than a regular hill or mountain. That, too, is an apt metaphor for challenges in life. But once you’re on top, it’s flat, constant.
Sure, there’ll be changes down the line, but it’s good for her for now. It makes me grateful for where I am, too.
Sorry, no insightful quip in this entry – I think such has kept me from writing so frequently. We’ll have to change that.
I have, indeed, mesa-ed. It’s been a hard climb, one that I was weary of many days, one that I thought I might not be able to endure but instead choose to sit down where I was and slowly slide back to something familiar. I hung on – sometimes to my own surprise, and not always gracefully, and mostly only with my fingertips. I had the smallest amount of hope that I’ve known in a long time. (Let’s just say I hadn’t rationed my hope resources well and I was nearing the beginnings of soul starvation.) But, in the end, I held on and I was granted yet another chance. Chances – one of my favorite things in life. Sometimes we waste them, sometimes we don’t recognize them – but not me, not this time. I again feel full of that bright cheerful hope and I’m happy to begin again on flat ground…I’ll take this break until the next climb is needed (and ration my hope better this time)…thanks for the encouragement and sharing in my joy. Friends truly are priceless 🙂