Today, July 16, 2018, is what I call a “No-TV Monday.” It’s a self-imposed restriction so that I get something done. No big goals. This is about a little laundry, a little research, a little reading, a little planning, a little bit of something more than I do most days, when I allow the tail to wag the dog, as the saying goes.
In tidying a desk, I picked up a notebook–I have SO MANY notebooks lying around my house and car, some pages filled with writer’s musings and rantings, mixed in with lists of what to pack for the most recent vacation. Today, I opened a random notebook to a journal entry dated 1/5/2016, about what an easy time I was having of life around that time, no problems to speak of, except that I knew of the problems of others and not only suffered for them a bit, but waited in abject anxiety for more of my own. Why do some of us do this, and why am I unable to steer my thoughts away from that constant magnetic pull? Sometimes I read what I have written and I seem to have my shit together, but… evidently not. Just an excerpt:

“…I empathize. Which is not to say that I’m an “empath,” a buzzword I keep seeing on Facebook from obnoxious, self-centered people (you know, the exact way I seem on Facebook to other people.)

People have problems this day. They woke up with the grinding angst in their gut. They got dressed in the fragile grip of a morning dawning with anxiety. I know that feeling. It cannot be turned off by my happy memes. What can I do? What can I do? My palms are face up, hands open, helpless. I cannot mitigate another’s suffering, any more than I can eventually avoid my own. So as I’m about to yield to the emotional paralysis, the lethargy and deliberate retreat from the day because the suffering out there has dimmed the shine, I decide:

It’s not my turn today.

I will change my day if anyone needs me to, to help them, to relieve them. But if not, if there’s truly nothing I can do, tangibly, I will pray my intangible, invisible support and say the things to make it and myself available.

And then I will return to this day, this well-wrapped gift of a day where my thoughts are on the future: dinner, a visit to Florida, another summer ahead.

Today, I will live. I am alive.

January 5, 2016. A Tuesday.”

There’s another blog entry for my three-part I Am Alive mantra, which some of my nearest and dearest have heard about and mock me for, rightfully so. But, the fact remains, I am alive. I AM alive. I am ALIVE.