Starting out today, after what some would consider a pretty crappy night (a cornucopia of female and other niggling physical issues seeming to conspire against me), I was thinking about what really matters. (Lemme guess. You’re doing an exaggerated eye roll to yourself right now, about to click the “back” button or the little “x” in the top corner of the screen, thinking to yourself, “Get over yourself. I don’t want to read another word about what really matters right now. I’m self-aware, I already KNOW what really matters”.

Okay. So click. But know this: You’ll miss the part where I reveal the secret phrase that gets you the 7% discount at local carnivals and fairs and you won’t get that superiority complex you’ve been needing the last few weeks.

If you’re still here, kudos to you. (No…”kudos to you” is NOT the secret phrase.) Suffice it to say, I could easily have decided that today was going to continue in the “crappy” category. I mean, why not? I got very little sleep, my body is rebelling against me in many ways, and there are always plenty of things to be upset about. But this morning, instead of going down that well-worn, bare dirt path that looked so uninviting, I decided to get my behind out of bed once again, make myself some ugly cowboy coffee, and move forward into at least the kitchen.

I pulled my clothes on, moved through the motions of getting ready to be the mom/wife/chief cook & bottle washer, despite the physical things going on with me and the nagging mental messages which were trying to make their way round my brain. Some of them included words like “you could just get Dan out of bed”, “he slept and you didn’t (what a jerk for that)” and of course, “why does everything have to happen all at once to ME?”  Yeah.  It’s all about me.  Right.

AVOIDANCE/ADDICTION BEHAVIOR 101:  I picked up my phone and connected momentarily to the rest of the world. Just for a minute. I was NOT neglecting my kids or anyone else in the house. I swear. I just wanted to see a glimpse of the familiar blue banner at the top of the screen, reassuring me that Facebook was still alive and well and ruling the social world. (It was.) I just wanted to check my email to see if the (refurbished, of course) iPad I had ordered was still making its way to me as quickly as possible. (It was.) I just wanted to make sure that I had added “buy dog food” to my to-do list. (I had.) But as I clicked around in my apps before leaving the dark quiet of my bedroom, for some reason I selected the “News” button on the internet app. And then I read the damn thing.

Suddenly scrolling before my eyes was reality from other parts of the world. Some of it not too far from me. I was staring straight into the lives of those who REALLY knew what it meant to spend the night – and life- in pain, worried about what was going to greet them each sunset and sunrise. Fires, war, radiation, a missing child…The bad stuff, the negativity, the scary, ugly, gut-wrenching, tear-jerking, sad things that make you want to brick yourself into your house with a 40-year supply of Costco rations, fuel and ammo…how can a person go on with all that being “out there”? More to the point: How can I get up, go out there to my kids, smile and tell them everything is alright? How can this world still be good, with all of this awful stuff happening in it? How?

Here’s how: Each moment that you breathe in and out in peace, each day that you put your best effort (or any effort) toward NOT being the war, toward not proliferating negativity, and toward NOT harming others is a moment, a day, that changes the reality. Every opportunity you take to turn your face to the light and encourage others to do the same, or pause just a moment to think about the struggle someone else might have, or where he or she might be coming from; every single thing you do, big or small, that isn’t solely for your own betterment, is another chink in the armor of the crappy knights of the world. (Okay, there’s the secret phrase for you…)

So…I turned off the news.

I went to the kitchen. I made coffee. Strong, ugly cowboy coffee.

Then I went to the rooms of my beautiful, sleeping kids so that I could wake them with kisses myself. I paused for a moment, just long enough to think about what an incredible day this would be. I pulled up the blinds in my youngest daughter’s room to let in the sunlight and talk about what the temperature was going to be: warm and sunny. I told her we could do her hair together and then make breakfast.  My oldest daughter was already awake & gave me a sleepy “Hi Momma” from her bed.  Her face was soft and serene in the filtered light.  I could not even remember why I had thought about staying in bed and asking someone else to take my place this morning.

Yeah, I made coffee first, before waking the kids. Don’t judge me.

And now, for one of my favorite sentiments from one of my favorite people:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever” —Gandhi