Snow falls gently on the spruce in the front yard this morning. As it accumulates, the branches take on a pattern of white that resembles the crystal form of a snowflake. I watch the movements of a pair of mountain chickadees who have settled on a branch just above the nesting box my husband made out of an unused piece of firewood. They checked it out within minutes of our first hanging it one April afternoon years ago, and they have used it ever since.
Chickadees know their business; their clutches have all fledged. The parents brought grubs and bugs from dawn to dusk, flitting back and forth with single purpose. Yet, a key to their success is focus; awareness of their local environs was as essential as their attention to the task. They are my models for a necessary balance between specific focus and general attentiveness.
At times I find it challenging to focus on either the specific or the broad, as my mind seems to shuffle randomly among unrelated thoughts. They arrive uninvited, triggered by who knows what: an uncomfortable conversation from a few days (or years) back, a sense of resentment or hurt feelings, whether tied to an actual incident or not, a feeling of defeat that I attribute to my many flaws and shortcomings. The “old tapes,” as psychologists call them, run on repeat.
The 17th-century French priest Saint John Eudes wrote about that point in time that lies before the beginning of a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy — by which I think he meant the kind of ruminations I described above. They reinforce bad habits, like doubting our abilities, motives and worth. They court despair. That moment, Saint John wrote, is where meditation can enter in.
I seek to be aware of that moment, before those old tapes kick in, even when they begin to roll before I’m fully awake. I’ve been advised to start my day with a period of meditation, but I find it hard to push away the mental to-do list for the day. I read somewhere that Charles Dickens complained, even though he set aside several daily hours away from all distractions, that he couldn’t give his full attention to his writing if he had some social event planned for that evening.
I feel pretty much the same. The mind leaps forward to the future while the present moment drifts away. I find my best time for meditation is late afternoon, after I’ve completed errands and activities. When no to-do’s lie directly ahead, I can close my eyes and fall into a wordless contemplation. The wise Italians have a saying, “Dolce far niente”: the sweetness of doing nothing. What a gift that is to give oneself.
I find my best time for meditation is late afternoon, after I’ve completed errands and activities. When no to-do’s lie directly ahead, I can close my eyes and fall into a wordless contemplation.
A couple of years ago I tried to keep a daily routine, beginning in bed with a few minutes of deep breathing and gazing with an unfocused eye out a high window through which I could only see a rectangle of sky. This morning I lay awake trying to remember details of a dream that skidded away at the speed of a meteor. It was enough, I decided, to remember that I had a dream at all, for that meant I was in deep sleep, a state I find increasingly elusive.
I recorded my aspirational daily routine on a spreadsheet with times blocked out for rest, meditation, art and writing. Hiking and running errands were meant to fit in around these important daily pursuits. The spreadsheet remains buried in the computer.
It probably wasn’t a particularly good idea in the first place. Where in my spreadsheet did I leave room for spontaneity and being in the moment? Its value was in having done it at all, whether I look at it again or not. It was a way of reminding me to slow down and remember what I consider important, even as the world I live in considers such things as daytime rest “optional.” The time it took to make the spreadsheet was a demonstration that intention transferred to physical action is a powerful reminder.
My to-do list is longer than that of nesting chickadees. As I write this, I am thinking about the dog walk that has to occur this morning before I deliver food to a friend who just had knee surgery, then I’ll be off to spend the afternoon in rehearsal for a chorale performance. I’m also thinking about the barely-started watercolor, the stamped letter that has perched beside the front door for several days as I continue to forget to pick it up, and so on.
Recording my daily routine on a spreadsheet was a way of reminding me to slow down and remember what I consider important, even as the world I live in considers such things as daytime rest “optional.”
Perhaps the following sounds familiar: I was raised to believe that productivity and excellence equaled value in a person. As a dreamy adolescent, content to hole up in my bedroom with a journal and record player, I was often interrupted with a reproach about my idleness and told that if I was looking for something to do, my mother had a chore for me.
At one of my first jobs out of high school, where I lasted less than a week, I served shoppers at the soda fountain of a department store. Once I had delivered their order, I fidgeted while waiting until another group sat down. What should I do, I asked my boss, when there was nothing actually to do. “Just look busy,” he said. Those marble countertops were clean and polished to a high shine by the time my shift ended.
Busyness, ingrained early on, became a lifelong habit that I may never stop working to break. I think now, the point of living is not to earn my place with constant activity, but to learn and grow and become who I truly am. One thing I’m learning is that it takes some of us — me, in particular — a lifetime to grow into the deep self, to sort out ego from essence. I was not blessed like saints of old, many of whom found a contemplative vocation at an early age. But I have been blessed with enough time behind me to begin sorting out what matters most.
Though the daily news tempts me toward despair, I struggle to hang onto a shred of hope — which is not the same as optimism. As a U.S. citizen, my responsibilities remain: to vote, to contact my elected officials, however pointless that may be, and to resist the destruction of fairness, generosity and democracy. I don’t want Greenland; I want to keep my public land. I don’t want to fear the coming years, but to find gratitude for what surrounds me every day. I could write a litany of wants and not-wants, but all who read this surely have their own.
Today I wrote my Congressional delegates again, and the year-end tax documents for donations have begun to arrive in my inbox. It never feels like enough, but it’s something for someone without the energy and charisma to start a movement. Long past that point in time that lies before the beginning of Saint John’s self-fulfilling prophecy, I seek the time that waits, after my current vicious cycle of hope and despair has wound down. Dolce far niente: it feels like coming home.
