Every Day

So many things get lost over the course of a life – objects and people and ideas. No one is exempt from loss, not even winners. We lose track of time. We lose sight of dreams. We lose the words that went unspoken and unwritten and unheard. Every day I discover new reasons to grieve.

The longest battle I have ever had to fight has been with time. There is always simultaneously too much and never enough of it. I have yet to learn – if such understanding can be said to exist – how to make the most of it, how to reach the end of my day and feel with absolute certainty that I had made the most of every second, how to close my eyes at night without feeling the small nudges of regret.

Recently I have been trying to have more adventures. I have been making the conscious effort to go out into the world and do more, try more, be more. But it’s left little time for those solitary activities I hold so dear. I have been reading less and writing less and although I have loved participating in these social events, I have felt less. Less like who I am and who I’m supposed to be. Every day I have not written here has felt like a loss.

And when losses collect, when they start to add up day after day, they begin to transform the way you perceive yourself. You are less like a person who has lost, and more like a person who is losing. These losses leave a hole inside of you, and when gone unaddressed, the hole grows larger and more frightening. Every happy thing falls into it. Every happy thing reminds you of the way you are sad.

And like all things we don’t want and can’t live without, guilt arrives. It spreads like disease. It attaches itself to everything. It takes away joy and leaves behind a dark heaviness, the kind that makes you lose sight of what once felt light. Every day you become more and more aware of the weight you are forced to carry. Every day it becomes a little less bearable.

But then one morning you wake up and hear the rain, and see that there is nothing on the calendar for the day, and you realize that you have all the time in the world to do what makes you happy. And if you’re very lucky, you’ll know exactly what that is. And if you’re very lucky, doing it will bring you back to yourself, will make the hole grow smaller, will make the weight feel lighter, will remind you that nothing is ever so lost that it can’t be found again.

This morning I woke up to the sound of rain, and an entire day to use as I please, and so I opened a blank page and started to write. And it feels good in a way that reminds me of who I am and who I’m supposed to be. Every day I get a little closer. Every day I discover some surprising new thing to love, and way to love, and that there is always love to be found. Every day I lose a little and find ways to grieve, but by each new morning, I am so much more.

Surely this is what it means to be alive, to every day continue fighting to do more, and try more, and be more. To know that losing does not define you as a loser. To keep seeking happiness and love, in all of their many forms. To understand that this is enough.

There Are Days

There are days that pass by when I don’t write a single word. Not the kind worth writing, anyway. None of love or kindness or beauty. Not one.

There are days when I tell myself I’m too busy or tired to open a journal or blank screen, to face the work ahead. But it’s rarely true. Because the work isn’t about the sculpting of words. It isn’t about the typing, or the desire to create. It’s about listening to the voices and what they’re trying to tell me. It’s about admitting things to myself that I’m too afraid to hear. There are days when I give that fear the names “busy and tired.” They are the days when I probably need to write the most.

It is cathartic, of course, to sit here once a day and listen to the thoughts that otherwise go unnoticed, to see them appear before me faster than I can recognize their meaning. It is amazing to uncover answers to questions I hadn’t known I’d been asking. It is remarkable to find truth unraveling on the page.

It is more than a means of expressing myself to you, dear readers, whoever you are. It is more than the connections we build from these inklings of ideas. It is how I understand myself. It is how I sift through the noisy world around me to find something familiar, and comforting, and sometimes even inspiring. It is how I discover, through all of the bustling chatter, that there is a single voice, an important voice, that belongs solely to me.

Sometimes I am brave enough to listen. Sometimes not. What matters most is that it never stops speaking. It never stops trying to be heard. It never gives up.

What matters most is that I have never forgotten what it means to pay attention. I have never stopped noticing the details. Every morning the world is created, and I step into it, with excitement, with hope, with open eyes and ears and heart.  What matters most is that I begin each day with love.

And yes, sometimes there are days that slowly drain that love from me, that leave me sitting in front of a blank screen, watching the cursor blink. They are days I’d rather not remember, not immortalize in words. They are days I’d rather not reflect upon, because to do so, to unravel the truth of them, to pull at those strings, takes a kind of strength I am often too busy or tired to conjure up.

And so I let those days pass by without a single word. Not one. And I am worse for it. The next morning doesn’t begin with love. It begins with regret and remorse and a funny kind of guilt. It begins with weakness and fear. There are days when my bones feel heavy, not from work, but from the absence of it.

Because I need this. I need writing in a way I can never truly articulate, although I continue to try. This is how I contribute to the world. This is how I speak. This is how I find my voice, and listen, and hear what it is telling me. This is how I dare to pull at the threads of my own truth. This is where I do my work, the important work, the work that matters most. This is where I learn little by little to love our only world.

I don’t know a lot of things, but I know this: If my voice ever stops speaking, if I ever stop listening for it, to it, if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead. Which is why I sit here, on this rainy Wednesday, writing, writing, writing for my life.