When I thumb through my old journals, I’m often surprised by what I find there. Sometimes, I have no recollection of writing these things down, like this gem: What did today do to you?
This question could be accusatory, as in how did today make life hard for you? Asking the question this way makes today the hammer, while we are the nail. Today’s the ocean storm, while we are without a life boat.
Another way of thinking about this question is what did life offer up to you on its river of hours? What opportunities? What obstacles? What wonders?
I couldn’t stop thinking about this question this week, because I was trying to make a big decision, and it seemed like my todays were nudging—if not shoving—me in a particular direction. All kinds of signs appeared in my ordinary life, like what happened to me while I was out walking one morning in the woods.
As my boots whispered in the fresh fallen snow, I looked around me. Every edge in the world was soft, and that moved me to promise the Greater Than that I would quiet . . . and listen. When I came upon an altar on a hill, a voice inside whispered what I should do.
“But I don’t want to,” I protested. “So, if you want me to do this, send me an owl.”
I was sure this would save me, because while I had seen owls in these woods before, the last one I’d seen had been torn apart by some other animal.
I kept walking and soon came upon a trinity of trees guarding a crossroads of paths. Stepping into the center of those tall sentries, I stopped and quieted. That’s when I heard an owl. Who, who.
This past week, my todays were offering me magic—and I still decided against making the choice.
It’s a long story as to why, but sometimes, just because something seems like a romantic choice (and is one helluva story), it doesn’t mean we should do it.
Or at least not do it then.
When I wrote to a friend that I worried my decision would mean the divine would turn away from me and offer the magic to someone else instead, he told me that the holy is always walking toward us. Life is rarely black and white, and he said maybe the magic and my reservations were both ways of honoring this call.
He then suggested that I think of it like trying to get the rational and my intuition to dance—like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers—rather than cage matching it.
And that takes time.
And trial and error.
And the courage to say yes.
And the courage to say no.
And a willingness to be on our own sides.
This means cheering ourselves on, picking ourselves up, and coaxing ourselves forward from the now into the next now.
What today does to us—all every day does to us—is ask us to be alive and human in our little wild lives.
i confess that when a new post is available, i read/listen to it several times. i like to observe and sit with it a few times and really listen to it.
i love this question, "what did today do to you?" it is the perfect question at the end of the day. not just for myself but for anyone whose answer i want to know.
ps - we all need a friend like that. lucky you!