Sleepy thoughts about the meaning of life.

I’ve been sitting at my desk for the last 3 minutes. Four minutes now. And in that space of time, I’ve thought about the day in snapshots, beginning to end. I pondered the new $5 rug I just purchased and whether or not to keep its tassels. I looked to my right at the tall whiteboard that sits perched at the edge of my desk against the wall and wondered if I could use this for next week’s pre-orders event, and then pictured what I would write on it and how it would look on the rooftop of the Art Ovation Hotel. I gazed around my room for a spell and imagined my bed atop a new bed frame, then rested my eyes on the long stretch of wall that stands unadorned, considering, gently, how I might add something; maybe a framed poster from a project I was part of last year, or some art print I might chance upon at an imaginary flea market.

These very long days, these never-ending summer days leave me with that “beginner’s mind” at the end of such a long stretch between sunrise and sundown. No agenda. No more adrenaline. Just simple, wholesome, full body fatigue from tip to toe. And it means, dear reader, that I don’t have anything particularly profound to say to you today. Only that I am sitting here at my desk, looking around at my own privy chamber and wondering how I might enliven the space. For that is my special word, which I am taking back ownership of:

Enliven.

To breathe life into.

To bring out the life in someone or something.

It’s ten minutes now since first sitting down and I’m gazing across the room at the stacks and rows of books I have carried with me from place to place—some for more than 20 years. I ran into someone today who made me a gift of a book whose cover I studied only this morning, thinking briefly of the person and feeling a sensation of settled contentment come over my being. That same sense of contentment (which could also be referred to as ‘self-confidence’) was present in my demeanor when I encountered him on the sidewalk near the shop where I work, and we spoke briefly about this and that as friendly acquaintances are apt to do. When I returned to the shop, a woman in her late 80s spoke righteously to us about how it is our job in this life to discover what gifts we were born with, and then to share those gifts with the world.

I wanted to cry a little and to squeeze someone’s hand in that moment, for here was a woman who had waited more than 60 years to claim her gifts as her own and to grow them with all the attention and energy that had been allotted to her these remaining years, telling us with the grace and wisdom of a long life, reimagined, to Act Now; seize the moment!

What felt like the entirety and completeness of my Soul shone out through my smile then, for such a feeling of recognition and oneness has not been visited on me in such a long time.

The rabid heat has really upped the ante this month it seems, and people are driving weird and acting weirder. But then you turn a corner and it’s that crossroads again. One path continues your oppression, the other one feels like stepping through a very gentle fissure in time and space so that you may witness a miracle—some small moment of peace and love, when you and they and everyone present is just as each of us were born to be, if only just for a fraction of a moment…

Be well today, dear reader.