I WONDER
Thursday, November 17, 2022
What will I do today?
Every morning I ask that question – whether I should do what I planned, execute the tasks and appointments on my calendar, tweak the revisions I made last night, or wipe the slate clean to start with a blank page.
A blank page – not a rescheduling day, not a sick day requiring a re-directing of everything to a new location on my calendar, but a ‘no worries,’ no follow-ups, no email messages requiring a response, no calls to return, not a formulaic rote-like marching through my day.
But blank, full of energy and without direction, with a world of opportunities.
I dream of days like that; they never come, but shouldn’t they?
Should they only be when we schedule them, or can we make them happen more often?
Little children don’t have a calendar, scheduling software, a phone or email – they come when called for a meal, and they run the other way when called for a nap or bedtime because they have complete freedom.
Their page is blank every day, yet they burn energy and learn about the world like a giant sponge, soaking up everything they encounter while experiencing unrestrained laughter and joy. And unrestrained outbursts of emotional tears along with kind-knee mishaps too …
I wonder if we could use some of those days later in life – and I don’t mean for vacation days or ones we schedule to be off work or a clean-calendar day to focus on a project.
I yearn for a culture of blank page days, but then I get out of bed and begin another day, a full-page day as most are, but with significant improvements in orderly triage and logic lately.
But it’s brain candy, is it not?
To image high-energy blank page days, to deal only with what shows up in front of us, what we see, what we think about, what we are inspired to do, where we might go, and some daring deeds too …
|