Tricks We Play

It is 7:52pm on a Monday night. A deep darkness fills the night sky. I have turned on all the lights in my apartment. It is a trick I try to play on myself from time to time, in an effort to lift the weight of winter from my mind. My kitchen smells of leftover jambalaya just warmed in the microwave. The inside of the microwave is clean. I marvel at this for a moment, and realize it is probably yet another trick I play. A clean microwave means a clean kitchen, right? The sink full of dirty dishes behind me would surely growl in disagreement if it could. I curl up on the end of my couch with my laptop and realize I am still wearing my workout clothes. Tonight is full of trickery, I conclude. Another one of my favorites: changing into my workout clothes after school, yet never going to the gym. After standing in front of the full length mirror earlier, I had decided that I am not yet horribly jiggly enough to require any kind of crazy work out regime. (Read: any kind of work out regime. At all.) My tolerance threshold for flab hasn’t quite yet been breached, apparently. For now, my workout clothes trick works. I settle comfortably in front of my laptop and eat my bowl of jambalaya. Slightly bothered by the way my stomach bulges underneath my sweatshirt, but not bothered enough to let it move me from the couch. Sigh...

A quote I read earlier today floats through my mind. “The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.”

How long will I trick myself out of this present moment?

My stronger self reminds me. This morning, driving to work in your “monster Monday” mood, you had no clue that several great things would ever happen to you today. In fact, this morning you climbed the stairs to your classroom with a bit of gloom hanging over you, grateful simply to be clinging to your mug of slightly bitter, mulled apple cider. Yet today brought you sweetness after all. You weren’t even asking for it. You were encouraged in your teaching by a supervisor. (Your lesson made “her heart pitter!”) You were inspired to start a blog on teaching. You were touched by two students who came to you, all flushed and bursting with excitement, with a wonderful science question. “Miss K! We found a rock! We don’t know what kind it is, though. We thought it may have been pumice because it has little holes in it but we put it in water and it didn’t float so we know its not pumice. But what could it be? It looks so cool!” You were so happy to see their eyes all wide and curious that it broke your heart and made you laugh out loud all at the same time, especially since you had to tell them that they had uncovered not a rock but a tiny piece of concrete. Today was beautiful, indeed. Yet this morning, you had no way of ever knowing this, and no motivation to even be hopeful for it.

If I can’t even imagine or anticipate a Monday being so sweet and wonderful, then how horrible am I at envisioning my infinite future being bright and hopeful and happy? Am I letting the tricks I play (to get through this moment so I can hurry up and get to the next one) determine my outlook on the future?

Dear future,

I love you. I trust you are beautiful. I embrace you. In this moment. And all the moments I will write tomorrow. I am going to try hard to keep embracing you, and all the hope and love and possibility you represent, instead of the little tricks I usually hold onto tightly. Thank you for being patient with me.

Love, Leah