insight

Yesterday I wallowed, a little--I felt a sadness creep up on me; then overwhelm. I was shocked and stunned and bewildered, really, by the expanse of time. How quickly and how resolutely this year seems to have paced on--how I've been unable to catch or savour it or, more than that, accomplish it. Because that's right: back in January, I had a list. A mental one, then an actual one that, by hand I had prepared. This, I vowed, was to be a big and important year.

So at first I wallowed about the things I haven't quite accomplished this year and then, the mechanics of my brain retreated; backwards. They chronicled the things I was meant to do years ago--or the ways I was meant to have changed: the independence and the courage and the the competence I was to have yielded. How these things were meant to prosper, most, as university grew and nurtured me. And then--then I remembered something, something Meg wrote, a--a small, (at the time) seemingly insignificant line about a music festival, and about the fact she was "doing what I couldn't have done a year ago". That's it, I thought, and it--everything, actually--suddenly, happily, had so much more significance.

It's about pace, isn't it? About what we can do when we can--when certain situations exert their power and what others take away. Perhaps I was too ambitious in my list of things--too confident in quick-fixes or the breadth of time and energy. But those things I've left out, thus far, I've filled with more. Not actions, so much, as thought.

I'm feeling what I couldn't have done a year ago.

And by that I mean that things--certain things, mostly talked about here, then here--are getting better. They are widening, a little, with the smallest of stretches. Yes, there is such a way to go--a colossal breadth of space of amble--but I'm feeling better--saner--more tuned in. So if I haven't crossed too many things off my list--I've started. That, right now (though, not always) speaks volumes--tomes, in fact.

I look to Meg, a lot, for insight and wisdom and, I suppose, methodologies on life. She is one of the wisest women I know (or feel I know) and she never, ever fails to surprise me with a new, challenging perspective. Yesterday, she posted about her own sadness in a beautifully raw and beautifully honest account, in the ways she, repeatedly, does best. Amongst it, though, was a vow to chronicle the things that lead her happiness. And again--again, I thought: that's it, that is exactly what I have needed to read. So I want to start doing the same--and where I already do, I want more of it. More of the things that raise smiles and lift eyes--more, especially, going into a time that might very well be my final year of school (in my favourite seasons possible).

So--today--happiness is this:

It's the concentration back to school brings, whatever age I reach; mugs of tea, minus the sugar; stormy weather and the music it creates; pomegranate, mango and strawberries in a savoury salad; and the urge I get, every so often, to load Diana with film.

I'm curious, now. What brings you happiness today?

*Please, please, please check out Meg's blog. You won't regret meeting her, or her beautiful, insightful prose.