Romancing the Present

 

A lesson in cultivating magic

The New Year is upon us, and with it, the first real winter weather of the season; I've spent much of the past few days hiding inside as freezing winds shake the house and slicks of ice cover the sidewalks. Zach and I have still taken walks and hikes, and with the thawing temperatures it only takes ten or twenty minutes to warm our bodies against the cold that we haven't gotten a chance to adjust to yet.

Both winter and summer in St. Louis are severe, and both inflict on me an amnesia. In the summer, I long for never-ending cold and bundling up and hot drinks. Nowadays, I find myself daydreaming about long sunny evenings and wearing shorts and never being cold (as if I don't spend 90% of summer cursing the weather and unsuccessfully trying to avoid heat-induced migraines). Even a few days of cold weather plunge me into the mindset that I will never be warm again. 

Living in the present is so difficult to do. There are lots of platitudes about this— grass being greener on the other side and so on— and rightly so; this longing feels hardwired into my body. The present is bleak, and gray, and boring, and lonely: only the future and the past are in full color, blazing with sights and sounds and beautiful things to think about. The present is not: it is dishes and laundry and sweeping up crumbs, editing sentences and sending emails and making phone calls, cleaning and cooking and wasting time on the internet. The present is so… ordinary.

A Hebrew poet a couple thousand years ago wrote:

The sun rises and the sun sets,

and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south

and turns to the north;

round and round it goes,

ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea,

yet the sea is never full. 

To the place the streams come from,

there they return again.

All things are wearisome,

more than once can say.

Apparently this was a problem in ancient Mesopotamia, too. It feels good to not be alone.

A couple evenings ago, Zach and I were sitting on the couch looking at our phones, and the weight of the present hung on both of us. Zach touched my shoulder and gave me a gentle push. "Let's get up," he said. "Let's do something."

I looked at the pile of dishes in the sink. I looked at the unread books. Nothing sounded good. Everything was too normal, too ordinary, too monotonous.

But I had a bag of potatoes that needed to be processed, and we had just installed a new oven (our old one broke). So I said, "Okay, I'm gonna roast potatoes."

Zach and I nodded at each other as if closing a business deal, and stood up. He turned on some music. A few minutes later, I was cubing potatoes on our well-loved cutting board, tossing the chunks in olive oil and salt. Zach was sitting on the dining room floor with an orange rope he'd bought, practicing tying rock-climbing knots on the back of a chair. I chopped potatoes. He tied knots. They Might Be Giants serenaded us. 

And I thought, This doesn't have to be ordinary. Nothing has to be. 

There was beauty in this moment. The gleaming black cooktop of our new stove, the warmth wafting from it as it preheated. The smell of olive oil and the feel of the potatoes slicing under my knife. Zach humming along to a song, pulling the rope over and under and around into different knots. I pulled out the preheated baking sheets and dumped the oiled potato cubes onto them, listening to them sizzle. I loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the countertops. Then I sat on the dining room floor and watched Zach tie knots and listened to music.

The moment was magic, if I wanted it to be. The present was alive with beautiful things, if I could reach out and let myself experience it. I sometimes get glimpses of this feeling when I cook, or clean, or take a walk and watch birds by the river, but in this particular moment I realized that this this could be practiced, not left up to chance. I could choose to find the magic in the ordinary, to mark my days with noticing and remembering and celebrating, to see myself through the lens of a storyteller infusing the mundane moments with meaning.

As the same poet said: "This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them— for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil— this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart."

The ability to enjoy. The ability to romanticize the moment, to smile in fondness over the mundane: these are life-giving skills, especially right now. With pandemic and icy winds and endless dishes looming, creating magic is a necessity. 

That's my goal for 2022: to find the magic. To coax the spark to life and fan it into flame, to keep it in the front of my mind, to fall in love with the present. 

Everything can be extraordinary if I want it to be.

~~~

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