Life is just so daily

Kay Thompson, Editorialist

May 03, 2008 10:31 pm

— I love Mary Englebreit products. I love her art, her geegaws, posters and sayings. I have an Engelbreit journal with a picture of a frazzled looking girl on the front that says “Life is just so daily!” This makes me laugh. It also makes me think, because it’s so true.
After all, life isn’t like the movies. In movies, you get to time-lapse your way through events, especially unpleasant events. No such luck with life. We still have to do the boring stuff, the hard work, wade our way through the unpleasant occasions. All those things we just plain don’t want to do.
On the other hand, we don’t time-lapse through the good stuff, either. We’re free to enjoy good times, to savor visiting with loved ones, to take our time doing hobbies that please us or relish a fine meal. We’re allowed to move through time moment by moment, making the best of it, if we so choose.
People admonish us to “take one day at a time.” This seems silly. We don’t have much choice, do we? Of course, I’m being silly, myself. Who doesn’t worry about the future or regret something from the past? I find myself sometimes just spinning my wheels, fretting about something that might happen tomorrow or something that I could have done differently yesterday.
But it only makes sense to plan for tomorrow. My life would be in a sorry state if I, for example, didn’t plan meals ahead so I could get all my grocery shopping done during a trip to the store or I didn’t make sure we had clean clothes to wear every day. So where do I draw the line between planning and unnecessary worrying? Well, I could worry with a lot of “what ifs.” What if the stove blew up? What if the grocery store ran out of food? What if the washer sprouted legs and ran away?
Talk about silly! Yet I play this what if game with myself about things that are way beyond my control. I worry about my 6-year-old daughter’s cancer recurring. I worry that my good health will fail me. I worry that my old cats will die. I don’t even need something to worry about. I just do.
I need to take a lesson from my daughter. She doesn’t concern herself with worry about tomorrow. As far as she’s concerned, today is to be enjoyed and so is tomorrow. Even when she’s about to have a procedure done for her cancer, she doesn’t worry about it until it is upon her.
Meanwhile, life is to be lived a moment at a time so I’m determined to spend my time that way, as best I can, delightfully daily.
E-mail Thompson at kaywt@suddenlink.net