A stout man, coffee carefully in hand, takes the entire allotted walk-time to cross Jasper Avenue. It’s his right of course, but his exaggerated caution is just an irritant to commuters. No one shares his approach to the morning–a Monday at that. I understand the auto-emotion and thank civility for showing up and saving his seatbeltless life.
Sometimes, more than manners, it takes a fundamental movement of the heart to see past the ruts of a Monday–the day we naturally know to be born under a bad sign…the day that’s down even before it has learned to crawl. Sometimes, to see your way to a manageable spirit in the perpetual ruins of a Monday it is necessary to employ certain strategies.
For some, counting upon shear endurance, plunging in works; for others, it seems, a new hair colour is an imperative. For still others, me included, it’s within the spark of a caffeinated second, that we see how a small change here, an adjustment there, a new habit or a dropped one (not coffee) might, over time, reach that wellspring of not merely Monday but daily contentment. And so we resolve a correction while convincing ourselves we won’t add to all the previous choked out resolutions. And under the fuelled flirtatious spell of sanguine intentions we envision ease-of-handling coming over us like a breaker on a beach.
But when this passes, remembering that it takes effort to get the emotional combination right to live out even a single day, we go back to experimentation. Like painters, we layer our feelings until the feel is right, or at least close. We’ve learned, even before we entered work-a-day life that there are no pure colours. We just try to find our best shade and stay under it as long as we can. And then live in the hope that the birds of suffering will not be able to snatch away the seeds of meaning.
Perhaps however, the stout man, attentive to his allotment of time, mindful of what is at hand, already has this all figured out.
The joys of a cuppa