“So, what are you plans for the day?” I asked Sig one morning last week, before he got too involved in monitoring our stocks.
“I haven’t decided,” he casually responded.
Heading upstairs to get ready for the day, with a stop in the kitchen to warm up my coffee, I thought how wonderful, how privileged even, to have the freedom to decide your day. Later on, I mentioned this to Sig, and he agreed, both of us recognizing the gift, the abundance, the richness of his statement and our lived reality.
Yesterday, reading a couple of blogs from my writerly friends, both meandered around this insight. Helen, in Ageless Possibilities, opened her reflection inspired by a quote from novelist, Louise Penny, in which she describes life as being made up of the tiny choices we each make every day. Helen writes,“Years ago, I made a collage titled Someday, a visual dream of reading, gardening, lazing, yoga, friends, and family. I did not realize then that someday was quietly unfolding through my daily choices.”
Gretchen, author of the wise and bittersweet memoir, Mother Lode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver (IMHO, required reading for anyone navigating the care of elderly parents) wrote with spicy humor and a dash of irreverence, “One does not have to carpe the crap out of every single day.” Call it a gift to self as she described her recent 73rd birthday, shored up by others who echoed that it’s always the small moments of a life – being present to and curious about – that matter.
We’ve had a ridiculously cold start to summer with inches of heavy, wet snow falling in the foothills and highway whiteouts on Solstice. Last weekend, thunderstorm warnings resulted in hailstorms that shattered flowers and shredded hostas and the fragile spinach, arugula and lettuce seedlings. The local greenhouse warned that recovery might be tenuous, particularly for large-leaved vegetables and fragile tomatoes. In the scheme of things, we needed moisture. Still do, as I recalled a skillful gardener-friend saying a few years ago, after a similar dry winter and spring, that if we dug down, at best we’d see an inch or so of damp soil and then dry, sandy earth beneath. I make mention of this because I’d planned to spend time weeding and tending to those hail-struck pots and beds. But instead, I made the small, yet significant choice to visit a friend who I hadn’t seen since we celebrated my birthday. My friend is living with lethal cancer, and depending on the day, would probably say on borrowed time, where and when those tiny choices, and small moments, matter enormously.
The final post I read yesterday was written by Anne Lamott in response to the USA’s choice to bomb Iran yesterday. A choice with consequences too profound and potentially devastating to fathom.
“I have no answers but do know one last thing that is true: Figure it out is a bad slogan. We won’t be able to. Life is much wilder, complex, heartbreaking, weirder, richer, more insane, awful, beautiful and profound than we were prepared for as children, or that I am comfortable with. The paradox is that in the face of this, we discover that in the smallest moments of taking in beauty, in actively being people of goodness and mercy, we are saved.”
We are saved.
May it be so.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
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A Wabi Sabi Life 
Thank you for exploring the absolute mystery of life and choices—both our own and those in the larger world. And then we must have a cup of coffee and greet the day with a sigh and then a “Now what do we do?” Ann
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Yes, what do we do? How are we to be? What is ours to tend to? And to know those answers matter. Much love and always, thank you for reading and responding.
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Ah, thank you, my friend. And thank you to Grant Faulkner for the idea that we don’t have to “carpe the diem out of every single day”! Who knew. It’s not the model I was raise with, but I let that model go long ago.
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