Today has been a relatively good day, though I find myself thoroughly exhausted. Last night I picked my son up at the train at around 12:45 a.m. He works until 11:30 p.m. and has to catch a bus to the train to get across the Bay to the station where I come to pick him up. There’s no good transportation from the station to where we live, so I am on call for pick up duty. This was not pretty because by the time we got home and I climbed into bed it was around 1:15. My alarm started ringing at 6 a.m. You can see the challenge this schedule presents. And unfortunately, this is likely to be the schedule for the next several days. Tonight I conked out on the sofa with my dinner tray sitting on my lap. I’d finished eating and nodded off right there. I will probably take a nap before I head out to pick him up tonight–I’m not sure I could stay awake until 12:30 even if I wanted to. So tonight I am going to offer a few simple gratitudes before going off to take my nap.
I am grateful for the times when I am truly living in the moment. I am focused on what is immediately in front of me, not fretting over all that I did or didn’t do in the past or freaking out about all the things that could happen in the future. Yes, I have things I wish I had done or said differently, times I’d behaved differently, but that was then and I already did what I did, said what I said, and acted how I acted. It’s a done deal. And while I have a number of thingsI need to do and have happen on my behalf in the days and weeks ahead, there’s little I can do in this moment except to continue to plan and prepare as best I can without being deeply attached to the outcome. Things can change in the blink of an eye, throwing all that careful planning and preparation completely out of whack. So it is useless and in fact quite harmful to expend a lot of energy fretting about what’s going to happen next week, when I really should have my attention and energy on what’s in front of me at the moment. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
This all sounds well and good, but it is a lot of work and I’d say I’m only moderately successful at achieving this state of enlightenment. I have moments of freak out nearly every day; it’s not about not having them, it’s about knowing how to handle it when you do have them. I talked about this a bit in yesterday’s blog when I wrote about the drill sergeant and the teacher–the motivator and the nurturer. Whatever comes up in the moment, I try to work with it–breathe through it, assure myself that I am not going to die and that everything in fact is going to be alright, calm myself down, and then get on with whatever I was doing when the freakout first interrupted the orderly flow of life. I am not an expert at it, but it is a muscle I plan to keep exercising until it gets well-defined and strong. And given some of the questions I am facing about my future I’ll have plenty of opportunity to exercise. Still, I am grateful for the moments of calm that I have in the midst of the craziness. In those moments I remember that life is good, it is sweet, and there is much to be grateful for.
