What Matters Today

I've written a number of New Year's blogs about how long it's been since I made yearly resolutions—how futile they are, how quickly broken—and how helpful it is to concentrate on living one day at a time without obsessive regret or anticipatory dread. So what's important on this day, today, that's all I've got for now?

Let's start with what it's not. It's not whether I lose weight or who won the election (not today or in any way I can influence). It's not whether someone I love says, "shoulda went" or a writer friend think it's okay to split the infinitive. It's not how many steps I walk or how many stories I write. It's not whether a small press accepts my new poetry manuscript or I have to publish it myself. It's not even whether my work sells any copies. The IRS claims writing is just a hobby anyway (unless you're James Patterson, Michael Connelly, or Lee Child), and I'm beginning to suspect they may be right.

What does matter is art, and that includes well executed fiction and poetry that connects the artist to the reader and/or listener. Art. Nature. Love. Affection. Kindness. Friendship. Belonging. Language. Emotion. Spirit. Beauty. Connection.

If I can touch another person today, I've done something of value. It may be as simple as hugging a friend met unexpectedly on the street. Mailing my annual holiday letter to the widow of the friend in Australia with whom I exchanged such letters for fifty years. Seeing by my sales for Kindle that a new reader is bingeing on my series and laughing and crying over my characters. Reading my work to an audience and knowing they are moved by the quality of the silence. And speaking of silence, shutting up and listening when that's what another person needs. I've been a therapist for forty years now, and I still have work to do on that particular skill.

It's hard to stay in the present when the future beckons. Whether that future is enticing or terrifying, it's the realm of anxiety. And thinking about it today won't make a bit of difference. A simple acronym, WAIT, may pull me back: Why Am I Thinking? Instead, I can connect with something that matters right now: someone I love, some facet of art or nature that moves me, some part of myself that connects with something deeper or higher, however I may conceptualize it. My role model for existing utterly in the moment: a breaching whale.