A Net

First there was excitement about all the things we might do now that we’re not flitting about town.

Then we started looking around, noticing, and maybe even feeling something. Like fear, like anger, like sadness, like grief.

As the loss crept closer, we began to realize that perhaps the meaning of this moment isn’t learning a second language or how to play the keyboard or scoring sourdough or planting raised garden beds. 

I’ve just attended a memorial service hosted on Zoom for a person who died from complications of COVID-19. And so I’m reminded that this is the time for something. These days, these weeks -- these are our lives. What are they made up of? An endless string of self-improvement projects? Ceaseless striving? Accumulations? Letting go? Loss?

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order -- willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern…

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage is sweet. - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Our net has gone missing. So, how will you catch these days?