I’m drinking San Pellegrino limonata while eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. A dangerous game. You have to really trust your antacid to do something like this so close to bedtime. Like the moon landing, I don’t do it because it is easy, but because it is hard.
Or, rather, hahd, as JFK would put it.
It’s also a delicious combination, of course, and invigorating. Like a brisk autumn walk by the ocean, but in my mouth. Today I am chock full of vim and vigor.
Moods are funny that way. Mitra put it well this morning, on our walk, that we tend to think that whatever mood we are in is reality. Really, our grasp on what is reality is pretty tenuous. We only see what we see, filtered through whatever our brain is doing.
I try to remember that in my darkest days. I am lucky that even the hardest stuff I’ve gone through has been temporary and mostly not horrific. I was going to say not horrific, period, but then I remembered I was in New York on 9/11. 9/11 counts as horrific.
Living through that was a great lesson in distinguishing between things I can change and things I can’t change. I couldn’t do anything about the deaths and the rubble and the smoke in the air. I did decide I needed to get serious about finding someone to have a family with. In the midst of the darkness, I started planning for the light on the other side of it.
The great thing about going through something like 9/11 is the hard stuff that comes after tends to look easier in comparison. Trump getting elected came close. So did COVID. Everything else has been easier.
When I’m sad now, or scared, or depressed, there is a part of me that knows it will pass. Sometimes that part is very small and quiet, but it’s in there somewhere. It helps me to sit with the darkness, see what there is for me to learn from it, allow myself to sink and look below the surface. It’s a good way to figure out what I really want down in my depths.
The other thing I learned going through 9/11, I just realized, is that it’s easier to get through hard times with other people. In broad strokes, everyone in the city was aware that everyone else was a mess. It wasn’t embarrassing to be sad and freaked out.
That’s one of the reasons I write these. It’s helps me process what I’m going through, yes, but I hope it also makes the people reading it feel like it’s okay for them to be a mess.
I like remembering that I’m part of humanity, that we are all, as Dickens put it, “fellow-passengers to the grave.” We all have this one shot at existence, and you have to go through all the messiness of it, the pain and the pleasure.
What’s messier than Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and what better way to amp up the pain and pleasure than by washing them down with bitter limonata? Today is a good day.