Change in the Wind, Dangerous Opportunity?

Photo Credit here

It is said (and also mis-said) that the Chinese word for Crisis = Danger + Opportunity. Not being a Linguist, I cannot attest either way, but I do hate it when The Universe changes the wind direction right out of my sails, thus creating a crisis, whether it is a dangerous opportunity or not.

Although I wasn't too happy to discover all the work on a new gardening spot I did in the Fall was for nothing, it was acceptable, even though it meant a time-delay of a gardening year, but I didn't consider it a true "crisis", just a major inconvenience.

Now all of a sudden, I do have a true butt-clenching crisis. My plans for the new food garden, along with many planned shade/fruit tree and fruiting shrub orders, and some much needed home repairs (esp. a new roof), are going change drastically quite soon unless some miracle happens. My younger half-sister and I share this house (and thus all the house expenses; although I have separate quarters, I pay half), and she was fired from her job last week. Since she was fired for "poor performance" after working there about 3½ years, it is unlikely she will be able to get unemployment benefits... and at her age of 63 and in a lousy job market, it is also unlikely she can find another job. That will put quite a strain on my already stretched finances. (Plus she has been supporting her 24 year old unemployed daughter who also lives here.)

I don't have a clue what will happen now. I only know that at this moment I am better off than many people in this country... I have a place to sleep out of the cold and rain, I have enough food, and I'm reasonably healthy.

Over the span of my 71 years, radical change has come along more than once, and almost always something good has eventually come from it... even though I could not see it coming at the time. In retrospect, I still believe each of the crisis ultimately presented an opportunity of some sort (despite any confusion on the interpretation of the Chinese word for Crisis).

This time I'm not so sure...

However, I do believe we all have Lessons to learn (or not), and that they are not always obvious to us. One thought in my mind that has been fairly constant over the past 2-3 years is a growing awareness of the importance of "community", whether that community is our actual local community, or the community of Family, or the community of Friends.

For most of my life I have been primarily alone and self-reliant, even amidst a large family and many friends. My generation, the siblings and cousins of our extended family, is now spread out across the country, and we grow farther apart with Time, as their own families have grown to include not just children but now grandchildren, plus all their various accumulated in-laws. I'm certainly not close to this half-sister who lives here, although that was one of my hopes when we decided to pool our meager resources after our mother died.

My connection to life-long friends becomes harder to maintain too, as we age and seldom see each other anymore. That leaves only the possibility of a "local community" to fill the void, and the locals here are a fairly closed, tight-knit group (plus all of them are mostly related). I know only a handful of people after living here 5+ years, and none well enough to call "friend".

So now I'm wondering if this change in the wind might entail having to move once again and start over for the umpteenth time... only in a place where community is possible... or if the change is something else entirely. I have NO clue... sigh.