Little things, big life……

New Year’s Day has always been my second favorite holiday.

Halloween is first.

Halloween is a time to play in the shadows, dabble in the dark. A time to don a skin not your own, put on a facade and become, for a brief time, someone better or someone worse than yourself. Halloween is a night of smoke and mirrors. It is a time to be anyone but who you truly are and discover your authentic self all at the same time.

New Year’s Day is the same and the opposite all at once (sometimes with a hangover) and in the harsh light of day.

New Year’s Day for some is all about the sports. New Year’s Day for me is all about the planning. New Year’s Day is about sitting down with a cup of tea, my brand new calendar, a day planner I agonized over, a pen which has been carefully selected and chosen due to its ability to convey control and resist smudging, and trying to be someone other than myself.

I know that I am unorganized. I know that I am always running late. I know that I am forgetful and scattered and never seem to have it all together.

I know. I know. I know.

BUT…..New Year’s Day, much like Halloween is all about illusion and I just KNOW that with the right guidance and the right tools, the right smoke and the right mirrors, I can be one of those people who have it all under control. I can don (at least for awhile) the skin of an organized person and be someone better than myself.

Which is how I found myself between Eggs Benedict (hold the meat add tomato, spinach and avocado) and donating blood (hold my purse add crackers, free t-shirt and juice) perusing the New Year/New You section of the local book store.

I headed off the encroaching panic attack (because calendars with birds on the cover are triggers for days marked with chemo treatments, doctor appointments and Hospice nurse rotations; until the day they are not….. and all the days are blank) by deep breathing in the cooking/Keto diet section until my vision was no longer tunnel and return to the “make this the best year ever” aisle.

I had the day planner (purple) and the calendar (animals wearing flower crowns) now all I needed was the method.

THE method.

THE book.

THE answer.

THE one that was going to make the lights shine down on me, the angels sing from the heavens above.

THE method to make it all make sense.

THE method to take my organization skills from illusion to reality.

THE method that would give me control.

I found myself surrounded by books about Flaneuring (the art of discovering yourself while wandering.) Lykke (promising to disclose the secrets of the worlds happiest people.) Hygge (meaning “well being;” the ability to cultivate togetherness and joy at the smallest and simplest things in everyday life) and blow jobs.

Yes……someone decided that “The Art of the Perfect Blow Job” belonged on the shelf next to “Thriving on Enough” and “The Big Book of Less…..” And perhaps, I decided in that moment between being overwhelmed and laughing hysterically, it did.

All of these methods, in one way or another, rely on (ego) stroking, hot air and lip service.

Here’s the thing…..less is not always more and control is an illusion.

Calendars and day planners and pens that don’t smudge are all an attempt to stroke our own egos, to feed our God complexes, to assure ourselves that we have some say in how the boxes on the calendar are filled, dictate how the story goes….events contained in their designated spaces, never spilling beyond the boarders drawn for them.

Monday never blowing Tuesday.

The arrogance of believing we are entitled to all twelve months.

Here’s the other thing…..life is not meant to be managed or contained. Life is meant to be messy, to smudge and smear and expand beyond the boarders we try to confine it to. Events, meetings, reminders are meant to be planned and written in ink; LIFE is meant to be lived in all of its disastrous glory.

Life is what happens in all of the blank squares between “Work Pot Luck” and “Heart Worm Medication Day.”

Life is all of the small things that don’t make their way to the calendar but make it worth continuing on to see what the next square holds.

Life IS about wandering, and happiness, and cultivating joy at the smallest things in everyday life.

Life is about filling our squares in with ink and allowing ourselves the grace to cross out the events and obligations to make room for the little things.

The little things that make up a big life.

So while I have filled in my calendar with birthdays and appointments and things to remember, I am making sure to leave space.

Space for all of the small things that can’t appear if we are too busy with things planned in ink.

This year I am going to slow down.

I am going to wander.

I am going to notice.

I am going to just BE.

This year I am going to check in everyday and report what the Universe has offered up that was not on the calendar.

I am going to celebrate (and I hope you will join me) all of the crossed out events that have made way for something smaller, all of the chaos that refuses to be contained to just one day, all of the smudgy words and thoughts and feelings, all of the little things.

•