Looking Forward

Yesterday I got together on Zoom with a longtime group of creative friends. All of us are older than 65. Some have families, some are single women. One of our members was missing our meeting because she and her husband currently have Covid. Two others (in a group of seven women) had family members who were sick or had been recently sick with Covid.

it feels like sooner or later all of us will get sick one or more times with this virus. I’m feeling a kind of “Oh well, we might as well do what we want to do since all of us are going to get sick anyway,” on the part of many people in our community.

And that may work for them and for most people. But like many people I know, my worst fear is not catching the virus myself but spreading it to loved ones who may not be “lucky” enough to survive it or who may have long-term negative impacts to their lives.

I continue to avoid crowded spaces, eating out, public events, public transportation, and the like. It’s hard some of the time. If I lived alone I might take more risks. But I am also starting to make some choices to do outdoor activities with friends like I did last week with my old photo club. It is a balancing act that I am grateful for, since I have choices that I can make. Many others in the world do not have the choices I have.

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.

— Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Is This Enough?

One of the questions that I ask myself about living in these times is, “Is this enough?” What do I need right now in my life to find joy? And surprisingly most of the time I realize that I have all I need for a joyful life right now despite the limitations I am experiencing.

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 sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s?

— Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

It’s all in how I look at my life that makes for a joyful day or an unhappy day. I find I require less and less and I enjoy the slow sweet days, and plenty of time to ready and contemplate. I also look forward to small things that brighten my days.

Things I look forward to right now—