I made myself get up, showered, dressed, and ready before accessing email (as opposed to my normal pattern of checking it first). It felt like a small, but healthy step toward patterns that are less inclined toward stress and more toward life.
Now, email open, what do I find but the daily posting from The Writer’s Almanac and this poem:
The Worrier’s Guild
Today there is a meeting of the
Worriers’ Guild,
and I’ll be there.
The problems of Earth are
to be discussed
at length
end to end
for
five days
end to end
with 1100 countries represented
all with an equal voice
some wearing turbans and smocks
and all the men will speak
and the women
with or without notes
in 38 languages
and nine different species of logic.
Outside in the autumn
the squirrels will be
chattering and scampering
directionless throughout the town
because
they aren’t organized yet.
(Philip F. Deaver, from How Men Pray)
There are other emails in my inbox, but they are more in the “worrier’s guild” category: things I need to take care of, issues that need to be resolved, responses that need to be generated, work that needs to be done. I will get to all of this. I will complete the projects that the day holds and demands. And maybe, just maybe, I will keep a sense of squirrel-likeness about me: not demanding quite so much of myself, holding the problems of the world but not obsessing over them, leaning heavily away from stress and toward life.
May it be so.