Imagine the Possibilities

My OLW for 2020 is “astonish.” I’ve been trying to pay attention and write something down every day that astonishes me, like Mary Oliver suggests, in a log I call “daily snippets.” Sometimes it’s easy, like the other day when I watched a praying mantis climbing up the side of the shed, or yesterday when I copied a line from Jane Yolen into my notebook, one where she describes a poem as “the pause between heartbeats.” (Sigh!) But sometimes it’s a little harder, especially now that I’m spending less time out in the world.

The easiest times, it seems, are when I’m able to visit with my grandchildren, since everything they do astonishes me. In person or virtual, it doesn’t matter. Just the other day we watched as Nina fed herself for the first time. We cheered as she carefully picked up bits of food and found her mouth, occasionally not quite hitting the mark on her first attempt. We marveled at her joy of accomplishment, the amount of food that covered her face and encrusted her peach-fuzz hair. And it didn’t matter that this is a scene played out in thousands of homes every day. It was astonishing.

There are lots of things in nature that Alex is experiencing for the first time – a buzzing bee, a waxing and waning moon, a special flower that’s really a common weed. He will easily explain now that the bees are happy and we should just let them be, and that airplanes are loud because of the engines. Learning about the wonders of the world is astonishing.

And if I really think about it, I don’t have to venture far from home to be astonished.

Lately, it seems, I wake to a daily dose of continued bad news, concerns, and worries. So this morning I challenged myself to record five positive outcomes from living in today’s pandemic world.

• A renewed appreciation for the beauty found in nature. Is it my imagination, or have colors been more vibrant, blooms more full this spring and summer? Was it just coincidence that I stopped what I was doing to watch the hummingbird for the full time she visited the feeder, then waited for her return?

• A feeling of interconnectedness. Somehow it’s comforting to know that we are not alone, that the whole world is experiencing this enemy. And although so many, many people are suffering, we can take comfort in knowing that many are also finding ways to reinvent things in order to survive. Let us learn together.

• Call to action. There are so many who are working tirelessly for the greater good, but every small act contributes.

• Deepening sense of responsibility to a larger community. I know in the past months I have reached out and touched base with many friends I hadn’t connected with in some time.

• Creative thinking. Now, more than ever, we need to look for new ways to think outside the box.

Many of the above are related since one idea naturally led to another. But somehow, delaying the morning news and starting the day on a positive note made a difference for me today. Now I think I’ll go see if that hummingbird invited some friends.