Motivational Mondays: Timing (with Perspective) Is Everything ...

Photos by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, on May 5, 2025

Recently I was on a very long walk in Golden Gate Park that ended at Alvord Lake ... I took a new route to get there ... I love every side trail and that is a entirely different set of posts ... but upon arriving when I did, I was surprised to find the three tree-circling benches nearest the lake open so I could get this view ...

400,000 years ago, you could walk from here to Oakland, because there was no San Francisco Bay. But it would be a lonely walk, because the rest of your species, homo sapiens, was still in Africa.

15,000 years ago, you could walk to the Farallon Islands from here -- and you might be followed by a saber-toothed cat.

Sitting here 200 years ago, you'd see sand dunes all around, and not a single coffee shop.

In other words, two of the possibilities have you doing what you can't do today and dying, and the third possibility you could actually have done, but, what would be the point?

That's how you read that as the glass half empty. That's how doom scrolling would have us read it ... but there's one more piece of history not written there: at some point in the last 200 years, someone did sit on sand dunes and saw a park, and that park has now seen its 155th spring.

In other words, to walk and read around those three benches and to look around is an invitation to be grateful.

For me to safely take a new route that was so long to get to that seat is a cause for special gratitude ... my recovery from anemia is progressing into the spring and I am making good progress. I still cannot safely do everything I want to do, but there is so much that I can.

There is so much that it has cost me to have days like this ... to have time in my life to live a life that few even understand ... to learn to walk alone while nearly all of the crowd is chasing after the busyness of the world ... to sit in this park, and see my fifth book, a way to fill the gap in the crypto understanding in the world around me ...

https://store.hivelist.io/product/seizing-the-crypto-bull-run-for-financial-freedom-e-book/

I remember that I came to Alvord Lake in early September 2023, and stood alone ... I had lost so many friends of the previous years, but to walk where they would not walk and see what they would not see in time was necessary, so, I brought my grief to the lake, took in its beauty and peace ... for it is a humble lake compared to many greater ones in the park ... and then walked on, still hurt, but knowing I had to seize the time to give myself and my readers two full years to get ready to seize the top of the market later this year (or not, but that's another story with all these things happening with both Bitcoin and Hive and the world at large).

I learned also, through the rest of 2023 and 2024, that if one must walk in grief, gratitude and joy make sustaining companions for the way, and if one walks with them long enough, the day will come that grief will stay behind.

Timing, with perspective is everything ... how many people sat in what was then San Francisco's Outside Lands 200 years ago and saw nothing but sand dunes in an endless stretch to the Pacific Ocean ... and who, in time, saw a park for me to see, and in that park see a book and also more than one Hive post ... when one thinks of all the blessings over the long course of time that it takes for us, this Monday, to be enjoying this post (me making it a little before Monday, of course) ... it is an invitation to gratitude.

This also means that this invitation to gratitude is also meant for you, wherever you are, whoever you are, on this Monday. It took 155 years of people seeing more than sand dunes in San Francisco to get this message to you! Whatever difficulties you may have in your life and time, you were meant to be encouraged today, so pick up what you need of the joy and gratitude poured into this post, and make the most of your day!