Hi. How are you?
I’m heading to NYC to see La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera tonight. The weather is not great, so we will have to slog through a lot of muck, but I can’t wait to sit in that space and just drink in the magic of it all. To walk the city streets and feel the energy. I think we get so attuned to our daily environment, wedded to our habits, everything we do on replay, day after day, that it’s easy to forget how important it is to stir things up with new visuals and smells.
I mean, my god, look at that. I get to sit in a room with that crazy shizmo tonight.
I was thinking of that Bonnie Raitt lyric this morning: Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste. Probably because I finally filled out my Advance Directive forms and sent them off to all the folks helping me with that. I sat with my doctor and we talked through all of it, then I signed and she signed and the assistant signed and … there it is, a plan for my end of life should I not be able to make decisions on my own.
It’s one thing to talk about it and write about it, but it feels different, with all those signatures and registration and official mucky muck. Now it’s there and I feel like it’s OK to die.
Sort of, I guess.
But I do want to get to the opera tonight. And to Colorado next month to see that wee new bambino and have all that baby fun, giggling and playing.
There are so many good reasons to want to stick around. I know you already know this.
I have a friend who was in quarantine recently, for two weeks, with Covid. She lives in a very nice elder housing situation and when she emerged from her time alone she said, “the first thing I noticed was how much everyone was complaining all the time about everything.”
I know what she’s talking about, this human tendency to focus on things that aren’t going well. Complain about other people and situations. But you watch when the diagnosis comes or the sands of time are near completion and I guarantee those folks, everyone, for that matter, will cling to life with with all their might.
How is that we shuffle through days, sometimes years, without being able to appreciate all the cool things, the majesty of the trees and butterflies and flowers, the taste of a perfect cup of coffee, the raucous beauty of the whole mad experiment? Why do we need someone to whisper in our ear, time’s up before we get how great it is?
I mean, I’m not a ninny, I read the news. I know about the shootings and the wars and the corruption, but I’m pretty sure it’s been like this for always. And for some strange reason you and I are here, now. This is our moment to bear witness. And we always have a choice in terms of the way we want to see it and the way we want to experience it. Most of us do, anyway.
I think this might be the great task of life. To learn to live in that space of black and white, rain and snow, opera and war. Life isn’t really so much either/or, but probably a lot more and than any of us care to acknowledge.
This is a short one because I have to finish getting ready to leave. I just wanted to sort through that a little bit this morning. Thank you for being a reader. I appreciate you.
xomo
Have fun at the Metropolitan Opera House. I am proud of you. Live the moment.
Live in the moment and be happy. We only have today to live. Do not throw it away on small meaningless chatter. Stay on the happy side of the street.