Week 7, Friday, November 21—When Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face,” she concluded that if you live through terrible times, you “can take the next thing that comes along.” On Day 7 of my 30-Perfect Days Project, I woke up anxious. My parents’ struggles with Dad’s cancer, all the running to and fro while sick and tired, overwhelmed me. My mother’s fear, my father’s confusion, and my worries about their declining lives enveloped me in a tight tension. My neck, shoulders and back hurt even before I got out of bed. I had no choice but to go forward—Dad was dying and I couldn’t stop it. I wondered whether the project itself was a ruse, an attempt to skip out on life. Living in the moment, seeking to live each day bountifully, and being positive about life has value, but as I sought excellence in daily living, my mother was growing thinner every week and my father’s nourishment was from a feeding tube. Later in the day while walking and holding the beach glass in my pocket, I accepted the sadness I was feeling and knew that I was already grieving for my father. I’d already lost my father. Read more in 30 Perfect Days.
Tag Archives | spiritual
30 Perfect Days Log 2 – Seeking What is True
Friday, October 17 – In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus wrote “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” Was I embarking on a 30-day journey for the right reason—truth—or was I trying to find beautifully serene days when all I desired became possible? The project became a germinating seed in Betsy Muller’s Artist’s Way class, a response to the exercise I’d done several times before “Describe your perfect day.” I wrote, again, about getting up in the morning to write fiction in my pajamas, take a long walk, do some yoga, garden, switch to non-fiction or marketing in the afternoon, spend an hour with a glass of wine cooking up Ragu Bolognese or Quiche Lorraine, talking with my husband Paul over dinner, settling in with a good book or movie at night. Repeat the day again and again, with variations of lunch with a friend, dinner at a restaurant, having people over, to have a beautiful life. But I wondered if my perfect-day project had some relevance or if the idea of making every day perfect was a stupid idea—it would be impossible. At a Gordon Square wine bar that first day, I talked with strangers about pursuing their passions, leaving behind their responsibilities, and being more in tune with who they are. From the beginning, I knew that part of it is about enjoying the journey. I was looking for bigger answers than finding meaning in my day when I asked myself: If I string 30 perfect days together like the dandelion necklaces I wore when I was a girl, will I birth a more creative life? The more questions I asked, the more they arose, like pulling dandelions from the yard and not getting the root out. I even asked: Is it necessary to think about life’s purpose at all? Camus reminds us that desire and truth intertwine like the loops that make up dandelion necklaces. My faith told me the answers are out there, if I dare to look deep enough.
30 Perfect Days Log 1 — The Book
Friday, October 10 – One way to share what I learned in my 30-day journey to find perfection is this Perfect Days Log. Here, every Friday for 30-plus weeks, I’ll sum up chapters from my book 30 Perfect Days, Finding Abundance in Ordinary Life, available through Amazon and Kindle. For now, I’ll share the excerpt on the back of the book: “We Earth travelers are on a journey on the river of life, meandering, flowing over rocks if we’re lucky, working through the obstructive branches, widening and narrowing in our ability to respond to the world and to be our best selves. We find our true selves as we go along, bit by big, even as we change, the changes wrought in us being part of all the things going down that river with us. The bad stuff, if we go about it right, gets left behind.” Why is it so hard to let go of what we no longer need? What are we protecting? Why do we need to keep things like worry, guild, remorse, and abuse for future use?