“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.”
--Annie Dillard, The Living: A Novel
Today is an ordinary Monday, and I couldn’t be happier.
Monday is one of my favorite days. After the weekend, I’m usually refreshed and ready to tackle a new week. On Mondays, I walk with a neighborhood friend for exercise. Our subdivision’s four-mile paved trail takes us just under an hour to walk, and we usually spend that time talking so it seems quicker. I love getting in a good walk on Monday morning—I feel like I’m starting my day and my week off right.
 |
| Walkable |
Usually, Monday offers me time to read a book on writing or an issue of Poets & Writers, which contains so much good stuff that I’m usually behind by several issues. I also like to read books and articles that might help me with blog posts, or with my own still-in-the-infant-stage book. If I have freelance assignments, I devote a block of time to working on them.
On Monday, I take a few minutes to tidy up our family room. I change our sheets, and today I also replaced our comforter with a cooler, matelasse coverlet. I water plants, pause to pet Scout, work on the accumulated mountain of laundry, and so on.
 |
| Huggable |
Monday shows me that I can control what I do with my time. I can relax into it, flow from job to job, and things go smoothly. I can, for at least one day, quiet the voices in my head that tell me I’m not doing enough. Maybe soon Monday’s gift will spill over into other days of the week.
What’s your favorite day of the week, and why? What does your “perfect” day look like?
I love a good adage. You know—a pithy little combo of words that sums up a principle for living in an easily-remembered fashion. To make things interesting—or confusing, as the case may be—adages can be contradictory: “Birds of a feather flock together” vs. “Opposites attract,” or “Many hands make light work” vs. “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Since I love playing with words, I tweaked a few adages to see if I could come up with some new ones. Here are three for your consideration:
“Money is time.” Actually, I stumbled on this phrase in the book A Writer’s Time, by Kenneth Atchity. While it’s true that time is money, it also works the other way round. Sometimes convenience is worth paying for. Paying someone to do errands or chores, for example, can free us up to do other valuable and important things.
“Bloom where you aren’t planted.” We’ve all heard we should “bloom where we are planted”—accept our circumstances and allow ourselves to blossom and grow, even if our situation isn’t ideal. But what if you know your circumstances are temporary? Maybe you’re two years away from an empty nest, you know you’ll be transferred by your employer, or you’re a student about to graduate and move into a new stage of life. Are you putting off really living until your circumstances change? Don’t wait for that change. Start blooming right now.
 |
| Do you see trees or forest? Or both? |
Do you have any favorite adages? Which one(s) would you alter?
“If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.”
--Kent Nerburn
“The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage.”
--Thucydides
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
--Mark Twain
Wishing you a peaceful, free Memorial Day weekend.
My grandfather, when in his nineties, wrote me a letter in which he listed everything he and my uncle had eaten in the past week. That was the news. I love this poem by Nancyrose Houston of Seattle for the way it plays with the character of those letters from home that many of us have received. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]
The dogs barked, the dogs scratched, the dogs got wet, the
dogs shook, the dogs circled, the dogs slept, the dogs ate,
the dogs barked; the rain fell down, the leaves fell down, the
eggs fell down and cracked on the floor; the dust settled,
the wood floors were scratched, the cabinets sat without
doors, the trim without paint, the stuff piled up; I loaded the
dishwasher, I unloaded the dishwasher, I raked the leaves,
I did the laundry, I took out the garbage, I took out the
recycling, I took out the yard waste. There was a bed, it was
soft, there was a blanket, it was warm, there were dreams,
they were good. The corn grew, the eggplant grew, the
tomatoes grew, the lettuce grew, the strawberries grew, the
blackberries grew; the tea kettle screamed, the computer
keys clicked, the radio roared, the TV spoke. “Will they ever
come home?” “Can’t I take a break?” “How do others keep
their house clean?” “Will I remember this day in fifty years?”
The sweet tea slipped down my throat, the brownies melted
in my mouth. My mother cooked, the apple tree bloomed, the
lilac bloomed, the mimosa bloomed, I bloomed.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from Wake Up In Brightness: Poetry & Prose by Students 2008-2009, Writers in the Schools, 2009, by permission of Seattle Arts & Lectures. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
If you’re like me, you know what makes you happy. You probably sprinkle those things through your days, like chocolate chips in a cookie (speaking of things that make me happy…) to make life sweeter. But what about things that make you unhappy—your happiness busters?
 |
| Photo courtesy D. Sharon Pruitt, Pink Sherbet Photography |
Comparisons. I can be feeling perfectly fine about myself and suddenly crash and burn because I started comparing myself to someone else…my neighbor, a fellow freelancer, a friend, even my husband! I look at my personality and accomplishments and feel inferior. How does she achieve so much in the same time I have? It sure looks like he is having a great time while I’m over here tongue-tied and sweating. You get the picture.
This is where my shaky self-esteem reveals itself. I tend to denigrate what I’ve done—“Oh, it’s not that hard to do such-and-such (because if I’m able to do it, anyone can)”—or compare what I perceive to be my weakness with someone else’s strength.
Comparisons in which I come out ahead can be dangerous, too. I become less empathetic—because, once again, if I can do it, anyone can! It’s easy to become critical of others when you “compare down.”
Guilt. I must have some sort of overactive guilt gene, because I fight guilt feelings all the time. Even when I’m occupied in something “productive” I find myself feeling guilty about not doing something else that’s productive. Crazy, huh? And the guilt alarm bells really go off when I do something just for me, which I do quite frequently despite the guilt. I may do whatever-it-is, but the guilty feelings shadow my happiness. It’s far too easy to let guilt become too large a part of the emotional landscape.
“What people think.” How many times do we do things—or avoid doing them—because of what other people think? Women especially have a hard time with this because we’re often raised to be people-pleasers. We want to be liked and we want to fit in. That’s not bad unless it causes us to give up essential dreams and parts of ourselves to do so.
I wish I could say I’ve conquered these happiness busters, but I’m still working on it. At least I’ve learned to recognize when they appear, and sometimes I even manage to banish them. It helps when I remember my belief that we’re basically all doing the best we can. Sure, we fail and make mistakes, but we’re human. At times, failures and mistakes are the best we can do while we stretch outside our comfort zones.
What are some of your happiness busters? How do you handle them?
