I don't know about you but I was inspired by Barack Obama's inauguration speech yesterday. He soberly laid out the facts that we are in tough economic times but with a twist. He said that our country's ability to produce has not diminished. We still have millions of hardworking creative people, a powerful stock market, and an infrastructure that can pump out lots of products to sell to the world. We still have great museums (I'm talking now here, not him), extraordinary cuisine, Rodeo drive and thousands of non profit organizations helping the poor. We still invented jazz and there are people who will take a whole year just to perfect the recipe for the Parisian macaron. I love America and I want to kick in my creativity to make it better. How about you?
Three men decided to run, yes, run, across the sahara desert. It took them 111 days--the equivalent of 170 marathons in a row with out even one day off. An amazing achievement to be sure. Perhaps even slightly insane. They finished their journey at the Red Sea, at sunset...and were speechless. No wild yelping and high fiving, just sober almost stunned expressions as they slowly moved their sunbaked bodies, aching joints and blistered feet toward the sea and together, placed their hands into the cool water. Charlie Engle described his experience this way. He said that it is perplexing to him that he can never fully process the experience. It was far too vast to put into any kind of structure or meaning. He said he knew that when he was in the moment, he had to savour it because he would never be able to describe it. Or, understand it. I don't want to moralize this. But I know what it means to me. The ultimate experiences with life are ones we can't put into human form and manipulate into words and meaning. To just let it be what it is, and humbled, let it transform us.
I am a compulsive list maker. I am always building lists in my head of things to do, things I've done, things to buy, things I don't need, ways to be more simple, why the internet is awesome, places I want to visit and what kind of person I want to be. I really can't stop it. I guess words are my way of creating something real. Just by putting it into word form, it seems more attainable, more imaginable, more...mine. Every year I think of a list of things I want to do differently in the new year. Go to the gym, work out, weed the flower bed. Or, things I want to do more of. Give food to the neighbors, write personal thank you notes, be in the present moment with my boys. But this year I have decided to take all my lists and all my words and boil them down into one word. Yes, just one word to describe who I want to be, how I want to live, in what way I want beauty to be made manifest in the world through me. That word is cherish. As I sat at the bagel shop in Claremont this morning with my 5 year old Jackson letting the sun dapple across his nose as he powered down a chocolate chip bagel, I sipped my coffee out of an environmentally friendly (I hope)cup and cherished the moment. Even though I was going to be late for work, and walk in late to a meeting and start my day late...i sat, and breathed and cherished the sun, my boy and life. Slow down. Cherish.
