Last night I slept with both my windows wide open because even after sunset it was still stuffy and hot in my room. This morning, I paid for it. I was awakened at 5:27 a.m. by the familiar and annoyingly sleep-piercing shriek of the no longer mysterious Dark-eyed Junco. As I peeked one bleary eye out from under my eyeshade to peer at the clock I cursed the little bird with the big voice and, I am embarrassed to admit, wished all manner of ill thing might befall it if only to silence it for at least 30 more minutes. It was not to be and so I rose, groggy and mildly cranky starting my day roughly a half hour earlier than I’d planned. Now I am laughing at myself, the great lover of nature and natural beauty who wants nature to operate on my time schedule so as not to disturb my beauty rest.
Tonight is supposed to be as cool as last night was hot. I witnessed this for myself having not long ago returned from a nice long walk with Honor. I had a light sweatshirt and jacket on to go out this evening; yesterday it was short sleeved T-shirt. The coolness is a more typical weather pattern for this time of year, often the hottest days of the year are between mid September and mid October before it cools back into the autumn season. For some reason this evening had an autumnal feel to me, the cool breeze whispering through the pines and rustling the dried leaves and yellowed grasses. I had to remind myself that it is July with the “dog days” of August just around the corner. I believe I am about to turn a corner in my life over the next month or so. It could be I’ll have some pretty serious thinking and decision making to do as I ponder my “what’s next.”
It’s an odd space I’m in; I’ve described it before in this blog. What has been increasingly clear to me as the months have passed is that this past year has been a least partly a lesson in living in the moment. That phrase has become so overused as to almost be meaningless, and yet I think it is the best way to describe how I have been living over these months. Now let me be clear, this didn’t come about by choice: most of the things that occurred to cause me to focus on the present moment were deeply painful, unexpected, and shattering experiences. They had me question just about everything I believed in, having shaken my self confidence, my belief in fairness and rightness in the world, and my sense of safety and security. For a long time nothing was focused on the future; everything was about surviving the next hour, the rest of the day, the next day, the day after that. I wasn’t fighting for my physical life–my health early on was the least of my concerns (though later it got a little shaky too…) No, I was fighting for my mental and emotional health and wellbeing and that, quite simply, involved putting one foot in front of the other, moment by moment, whether I wanted to or not. Eventually, those moments turned into hours and those hours into a whole day and sometimes two whole days in a row of feeling good again. I am grateful for each moment my strength of will prevailed, as I slowly gathered myself and proceeded to live my life as best I could.
I have made peace with living in the moment, though to be honest, it is still a somewhat uneasy peace. There’s always the tension between living in the moment, but also living in the “real world” that values planning and preparation and needing to know what comes next. I am living that tension right now, and it can be pretty intense. Nevertheless, I can still manage to find myself smiling ruefully at the moment that I realize that nothing I am doing is going to drown out the noise of the shrieking Junco enough for me to get that precious additional 30 minutes of sleep. I choose constantly what to do in the moment. I could grouse and crank and wish I had a slingshot with which I could fling something at the bird (as if that would make it be quiet), or I could do what I did: smile and shake my head, groan, stretch, and get out of bed. Tonight, however, the windows will be closed up tight.
