There is nothing
simple about the world we live in. Deluged with information, manipulated and subdued through fear, we are
held to expectations that grow infinitely, feeding on themselves and
multiplying.
Where two decades ago I was proud of myself for deciding to go back to school, slogging to the community college for a night class, now I berate myself for how many months it is taking me to complete my Master’s thesis. Ten years ago, I felt full with a day spent happy with my children, watching my son play baseball on an afternoon that stretched long and immeasurable. Last night, I couldn’t sleep with all that I wasn’t doing, my short daily list of crossed out expectations and the longer one of those not crossed out, which wait, naked and jeering.
As the years fly past, it is easy to heap hopes and expectations on top of each other, to believe what the media tells me is possible in a day. A pretend day, inhabited by pretend people. My life is not tidy like that. I didn’t go to the gym. I try to maneuver the teakettle to fill it over the heap of unwashed dishes. I didn’t write a novel or run for office or knit a scarf or even make any money today.
It’s okay. More than okay, this is my beautiful life, in my real world story.
It’s hard to remember this though, when I lie in the quiet nighttime room and remember that I didn’t pay the cell phone bill.
When I found out I had Hep C, my sense of time changed. I became afraid that I would die - at any moment really - and this altered the vague sense of permanence that had once defined my life. I suddenly felt an immediacy, an urgency; if I didn’t do everything I meant to do, it would be lost.
In a positive way, this propelled me toward some dreams that I had set aside for later. Going to graduate school was one of them; starting my own practice was another. Conversely, it made all these things seemed rushed, forced me toward them, or they toward me, so that they suddenly felt obligatory and, frankly, overwhelming.
In my hurry to finish the things I thought were part of my destiny, I began to lose sight of the simple joys of a simple day. That simplicity is the reason of a life. It is the one meaning. The present, the now and all that inhabits it. It is the point of not-dying.
For the last week, it has rained here in Oregon. Dramatic rain, blowing currents of leaves, mysterious crashes outside the house at night as a branch tumbles under the weight of the water. As I rush through the daily list, it becomes an inconvenience, all this rain. It slows my progress, keeps my socks wet, and discourages me from walking the dog, which has been uncrossed on the list for days now.
In my productive frenzy, I might miss it. I might miss the stunning, sudden clearing of the night sky and the full moon perched there, visible through the now-leafless branched silhouette of the tree. I might miss the sound of the tree scraping against the house, and the scattered yellow and red leaves that adorn the muddy earth.
And this is everything worthwhile.
My daughter looks suddenly like a woman. Her body changed some years ago, so that’s not what I’m referring to. It is something in her face, in the way she carries herself; it is something deepening behind her eyes.
On the refrigerator hangs an old photo of her when she was seven. Sorting all the crap that hangs on the fridge is seldom crossed off the list, so the old school photo remains.
It is a daily thing, her changing. I see the girl in the photo, and the almost-woman face of my now-daughter, and there is a ghost of each in the other, but they are altogether two different beings.
I can miss this, if I am not careful.
If I want to survive this disease, it is because I want to see the next person she becomes, and the next, and this has nothing at all to do with whether I did or did not get a novel published.
She contains everything that is a life’s meaning.
I am enough. My life is enough. My day was enough and the rain is the weather of this day. That task was accomplished and this one wasn’t and I did or didn’t eat that highly caloric muffin.
Today, I was in a support group and a man spoke wisely, “I used to not take credit for the good parts of me, because I figured those were gifts given by God and none of my doing. But I realized that I was taking full responsibility for all my defects. Then I understood that they were just as God given. I used to look in the mirror and see an overweight man and feel shame, and now I look at myself in the mirror and I see a man that is big. A big man. Just the way he was intended to be. Just big.”
Shame and guilt swim through my day. I evaluate my life, and myself, and see a thousand things that need changing. I need to stop this and quit that and learn this and fix that and improve here and get moving on that and, and. And. I am no longer seeing myself, my actual self. It is as though I am looking at the dark afternoon, the heavy sky, the soaking, pouring rain, and making a list of all the ways to turn it into an arid desert landscape.
The rain is, and I
am, and you are, and the world is as it is. For just one moment, I absolve all of us from having to change a single
thing about ourselves. We are all, in this
shared moment, absolutely perfect and complete.
Hold that.
It is precious. And we have a right to it.
