The days are sloooowly getting longer now. The sun is up to wake me each morning, but still not around when I get home.
Tonight the moon was pretty impressive. A brilliant small crescent was all that was visible of the moon, with only the faintest hint of the rest of its circular profile visible in the early night. It struck me that the moon was smiling, something I’d never noticed before.
It was too low on the western horizon to take a photo, but its an image I’ll long remember. I don’t have too many strong memories of the night sky, one other I remember is sitting with a group of people outside after Pat and Paul’s wedding. It was really dark, we were somewhere near Larry Byrd’s hometown not too close to city lights, and the clear night was filled with stars. What made it especially memorable was being able to see the ecliptic plane. This incredible alignment of the planets of our solar system appeared in the sky, making a connect-the-dots tilted arc. It was as if the heavens aligned for their wedding.
As I try to sleep, my mind seems to come to life at full speed. The list of things that need doing, things I’d like to do, things I must do the next day, things I didn’t get done today, all seem to scroll by in an endless loop. Sometimes I wake up and write them down. This often helps me sleep because by the time I get to the end of the list, its almost time to wake up.
The “to-do’s” don’t weigh on me too often. Tomorrow’s an exception to that rule…talking about negotiated settlements is pretty unsettling. But the “wish I hadn’t” list is one that weighs heavily on me. It’s kind of a long scroll, one that seems to increase logarithmically with age, an indication that I’m on the gradual downslope part of life maybe.
I’ve learned from some of the “wish I hadn’ts” on the list, but not as many, or as quickly as I should. Some go hand in hand with “wish I hads” mostly those are “wish I had seen then what I can see now” mostly those are decades-old but, they’re still around. I’ve had instincts, feelings about people, places, requests, demands and usually I shrug them off, being convinced I was over-reacting, and things will get better in time. They can, but only if a person works them out right when they occur. It’s true you can’t second-guess life. If I had put my foot down, acted on my instincts, some lives would have been very very different, which is to say, longer I think. I remember feeling that a high-school friend was working unusually hard to avoid me during one week. I told myself he was changing groups, from our nerdy lunch club to one of the more with-it groups of kids, and something about them didn’t seem right, but, I thought, who am I to say? I learned he had gone to a party with them, and then inexplicably, climbed a high tension tower and grabbed the wire. There’s been a few things like that, mostly between high school and a few years ago, that I remember on most nights, knowing, but not knowing, what would have made a difference? What would make a difference tomorrow?
A list of simple sayings scrolls through most evenings. They aren’t original, and I usually can’t consistently live them, but are usually my final thoughts before drifting off:
…when in doubt, act…
…as long as you fall on your face, you’re moving in the right direction
…the right thing is seldom the path to pleasure, but is still the right thing
…initiative distinguishes one from the many
…leaders are more interested in the success of their team, than their own
…know what you live for, live for your purpose
…if you don’t know the right answer, give three or more, then choose the best of what you have
…(this one is easy in design work, impossible in life for me) put your problems together to make a new question, a new possibility
…don’t hit “send” for a few hours…or days
…every once in a while, be the grasshopper, not the ant…
Some other things that scroll past, vividly good, and not so good, but on the same scroll: the birth of my daughters (incredibly good), missing the death of my father, touching an oak box on a cold windy hill and having it knock me down, a silent drift down a windless shoreline at dawn, seeing the first snow of the season, seeing the last snow of the season, shaking the hands of students coming off the graduation stage, not being there with my students on an early April day, being there when a poet lifted a university on her shoulders, watching someone laugh from their toes-when you never thought you’d see them laugh again, seeing the pain i’ve caused in others, finding a universe in a tidepool and infinity on a beach…
You get the picture, sleeping is hard, not just for me, but lots of us. I think we have to let ourselves off the hook sometimes…usually by owning up to what we did and what we felt. Others help us by standing by, standing up, sometimes standing in. Ok, I’ve lost the train of thought. It must be time for sleep!
Take Care, help each other off the hook, read the faces around you and do what you can, but let them do the final lifting to get off the hook, you can’t do it for them…
Smile to each other, like tonight’s moon did to us all.
