this is the day
everything else is questionable
If you’d like to listen to me read this letter to you, you can do that too:
Greetings earthlings,
The sun says hello through the window.
The space heater hums like a warm blanket.
I wake earlier than I need to. Than my rhythm.
But I can’t argue with reality. That seems to be the problem most often.
In grade school we started each day with a song:
“This is the day (This is the day)”
“That the Lord has made” (Now you know what kind of school I went to. Another story for another time).
“I will rejoice (I will rejoice)”
“And be glad in it (And be glad in it)”…
It was grating and loud and it should be a crime to clap before 9 a.m.
But, its sentiments stuck with me.
And here I am over three decades later, remembering.
This is the day.
The only day we have right here in front us.
And yet we spend so much of our time replaying days previously lived, or yearning for days not guaranteed.
Andrew typed this phrase out and saved it as the home screen on our shared, tired, cracked iPhone 8.
So we’d stop forgetting:
This is the day.
“Look at her go. Like a greyhound,” he pokes as he lights the stovetop for what I still call coffee even though we gave that up some time ago.
He’s talking about my writing swell.
People used to say the same about our dog, Escher. He race? How fast?
I never made the connection out of context until I did.
He was always a Doberman. He was always running, forever Escher.
I keep thinking about things I want to share that I learned through our journey with him. They’ve been chewing on my insides long enough.
Like how we almost lost him at the teaching hospital that was supposed to save him.
And how I have viewed everything differently since.
“He didn’t read the textbook,” they said, over and over.
Meanwhile I stayed up all night at our hotel room watching The Office and binging on research articles and scholarly journals.
The intern vet broke his oath and told us to get him out of there. That he was getting worse. That we needed to go.
He left on 11 medications.
When I asked about side effects, I was quickly diverted.
I looked around the room and saw advertisements for the same drugs in question.
Everything has an effect. Net positive or negative.
And affects everyone differently.
It’s not a crime to ask questions or to question institutions.
When profits bind up any room for complexity.
I’ve always questioned things, but it seems to be coming with a higher cost these days.
This has made the last few years harder and more isolating than I’ve let on.
I won’t let it stop me anymore.
Because it’s too important to me.
To honor the living complexity.
To acknowledge that questions don’t necessarily mean you are conspiring.
Sometimes they’re just questions.
The desire for truth.
To not be shielded from the truth that nobody has the answers.
There is no singular textbook.
But there should always be room at the table for questions.
I made my mom “promise swear” to me as a kid. Binding her pinky finger up in mine with a strong grip and even stronger eye contact. Like an interrogator. Only a child.
It’s how I eventually found out Santa Claus.
I wanted the “promise swear” to give me the answers. But more than that, I really just wanted the “promise swear” to keep me safe.
That’s what I was looking for.
Safety and certainty. Any absolute.
Aren’t we all?
Later in life other things replaced this.
Mostly control and fixations.
I still work through it.
While smiling at the little girl who needed the “promise swear.”
An attempt to wrangle in the madness of all of it.
We got a new book in the mail the other day.
We had it once, but then we let go.
It’s in the name.
“Letting Go: The pathway of surrender”
Dedicated to removing the blocks to the Higher Self on the path of Enlightenment.
If there was a textbook designed for me, it’s this one.
I’ll be holding onto it this time.
It’s not the “promise swear” of childhood.
Or maybe it is, just one of a different kind.
…
I told a friend over the phone that I like portraying the version of me who feels alive and grounded and connected — that when I’m off or down or just not feeling it, I want to hide away and avoid contact.
She wasn’t bothered or disappointed with me, but I was.
What if this person we keep picturing we’re letting down is just us?
What if I’m asking something of others that I’m avoiding myself.
I’m avoiding myself.
I get this sort of unease every day around 5 p.m. as the darkness inches in.
It’s an unsettled feeling.
A seasonal reminder.
A daily death. Or maybe part of the dying off I wrote about recently, here:
I try to keep my eyes on the setting sun as long as I can so I’m prepared for it.
But, still.
I awoke a few nights ago freaked out being in this body.
Does anyone else zoom out this much? I wonder.
To question even reality itself?
…
This is the day! If we know that, is it enough? To let go of everything else, and be glad in it.
What’s still churning within that’s keeping you from the rejoicing part?
No judgment, just asking. Because I’m asking myself the same.
Circumstances? Hurt? Confusion? Resentment? Heaviness?
Or maybe it’s this envelope of uncertainty that sits around like a morning fog.
I want to feel ready to rejoice again.
Before 9 a.m., even.
Only this time without the hand clapping.
I’ll sip my “coffee.”
I’ll listen to the birds.
I’ll “Begin The Begin, over and over.”
To the tune of the band, The National.
Here’s the 7 minute song, in case you want to go there with me.
If you listen long enough, there’s a part in there I always come home to:
“If the sadness of life makes you tired. And the failures of man make you sigh. You can look to the time soon arriving. When this noble experiment winds down and calls it a day.”
Until then…
May we keep inching our way towards rejoicing in the moments in front of us.
May we keep finding the things that are weighing us down and standing in our way.
May we keep realizing that thing is often the workings of our own minds, and not punishing ourselves for it.
Might we keep remembering:
THIS IS THE DAY.
Here it is for you and your phone screen, in case you need reminding.
Glad we’re here,
Sarah
Keep reading…
Here is last week’s letter if you missed it. All past letters can be found in the archive.
