On Missing a Day

I spent most of yesterday morning sleeping. I got up several times—even made a cup of tea and headed for the porch to write, but felt dizzy and nauseous so headed back to bed. I wanted to write—felt I should write, but I just couldn’t.

It’s hard to stop. The patterns of our lives pull us forward—for good and for ill. The virtuous cycles of writing every morning, of daily time in the garden, of nutritious eating—all of these are habits that nourish me and bring me alive. Of course there are the vicious cycles as well—patterns of behavior that offer immediate reward but ultimately leave me feeling disconnected and exhausted. Most of my vicious cycles have to do with too much—too much time on the computer or TV, too much work in the garden, too much sweet food or being too nice. (The last one is really complicated and I’ll write about it some other time.)

We all have ways to escape and these are important human necessities. Life is often too much and to be able to stop whatever important work you are doing and take a break is an important thing to do. Too much of almost anything is not healthy.

The Buddha taught about the middle way. I recently learned that in the Anglican tradition there is a similar concept called the ‘via media’ – the middle road. This teaching of some path between two extremes is a guide to help us living balanced and meaningful lives.

We all have a tendency toward extremism. I knew a guy who spent three or four hours a day in the gym. While spending time in the gym can be a healthy thing to do, he was obsessed with the appearance of his body and it didn’t seem like it was improving the quality of his life to work out so much. Now I’m not in danger of that particular excess, I have learned to be moderate when I do exercise. At my tender and advanced age in my seventh decade on this planet, I can easily do damage to my body in my enthusiasm for the project of getting in shape.

How do we find and maintain good habits? For the past few months, writing every morning has been a habit that has enriched my life. Every morning, until yesterday, it was the first thing I did. I’d been wanting to write regularly again for the past three or four months. I’d even decided to write another book and I’d been noticing the people (including my mother) who said they missed my regular writings and postings. But I couldn’t get started.

We human beings are creatures of habit. The things we do today are the best predictor of the things we will do tomorrow. Our challenge is to break out of the current patterns that no longer serve us and not to let the new ones carry us away. There are all kinds of theories about how to break old habits and create new ones. All these theories are true to some degree and sometimes work. But none of them work all the time.

For me, creating and maintaining life-giving habits is a matter of intention, stubbornness and grace. Any two of these three, without the third are not enough.

Intention comes from asking the perennial question: ‘What do I want? What do I really want?’ This question has the power to take us beneath the surface of habit and busyness—to take us out of our heads and down into our hearts and bodies. This is a very different question from ‘What should I do?’ While this can be an essential question too, it often leads us into more thoughts of what others think and what we’ve heard and read. This is different territory from the deep longing of the heart and perhaps has its place only after we have touched the deeper purposes of our beings.

When we touch some purpose beyond and beneath all our ‘shoulds’, then we have to decide to take some step based on that purpose. This is where determination comes in. What is the next thing to do? How do I take one step to move toward what is calling to me? And then take the next step. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It doesn’t even have to be the best thing. But every worthwhile adventure begins with some small action. Then we need the determination, the stubbornness to take the next.

Finally is the matter of grace. While there are all kinds of skillful means and helpful perspectives, life remains, for me, a mystery. Sometimes I am conscious of how easy it is to move in alignment with some deeper intentions of the heart, other times I feel utterly powerless to live the life I so glibly talk about. It is always premature to take ‘credit’ for any good habits you have. We continue on our path only through the grace of good health and favorable circumstances. We should every day give thanks for whatever behaviors we currently have that nourish and enrich our lives—and vow, as we can, to continue as long as we are able.

So all day yesterday, once I was out of bed and stumbling through my day, I tried to decide whether it would be better to do some kind of short writing – to keep my ‘string’ of posting every day going. I don’t want to be controlled by ideas of purity and pride and I want to follow through on the intentions and actions that seem to serve me and the world around me.

In the end, I don’t know whether I actually made a decision or it was just laziness that led me to settle in to the couch next to my wife and watch the next episode of Veep and then the next episode of several other shows. It was lovely and easeful.

I only felt slightly guilty. In the back of my head were the familiar doubts. Will I write tomorrow morning? Will I lose the motivation of ‘not missing a day?’ I didn’t know, but realized that I won’t write forever and thought it would be good to have a day off.

But this morning, I’m happy to feel well enough to be here again. Happy to have this time to wander and wonder. And hope these mostly daily reflections continue to be helpful for a few others as I send it off without waiting for it to be perfect.