A somewhat purgatorial moment – this mid-week, mid-month, mid-fall day – and all the worst that is Wednesday still lays ahead. Or is it lies? My English major fails me yet again. I’m never quite as good as everyone thinks, and still quite better at the same time. Such a conundrum calls for a simple song that poses similar sentiments, with a somewhat sad piano melody. Wonderful Wednesday music…
Fall hangs heavily in the air on these foggy mornings. It takes a little longer to get out of bed, and this is only the beginning. Wait until January. Wait until February. Wait until that thirtieth snowstorm of March. We haven’t even approached winter, and the weight of its enormity feels overwhelming. At such times I return to my daily meditation, and remind myself of the focus on the moment at hand. One minute is easy enough to get through, and minutes becomes hours become days become months and so on. The blessed and cursed cadence of time.
Time, spilling out, spilling forward like gourds from a fall basket, is our greatest sorcerer. It bends and twists itself into grotesque forms, usually in whatever frightens us or wears us down the most. I don’t know how best to master or tame it. Instead, I do my best to take it a little bit at a time, trusting that being mindful is always the right choice, no matter how difficult it might be. Breathing through those tough times, one breath in and one breath out, and then again, and again. And then a minute has gone by, and if you can get through one, you can get through two. By three or four you forget what you’re doing and why, and perhaps a crisis is averted. Simply by breathing.
A good-enough lesson for a Wednesday morning.
