Sliver Me Splinters

Most mornings, once I've reluctantly pulled back my heavy comforter still warm with sleep and placed the soles of my feet on the woven mat beside my bed, I yawn and stretch my way over to my window to look outside to the world beyond my curtain. Pushing the curtain aside just a sliver, I look out into the dimness for signs of temperature, precipitation and an overall feel for the day even though it is still in its dawn-most form. This information-at-a-glance that I get helps me to choose a weather-appropriate outfit for the day and to see if I need to set aside a few extra moments to deal with undue amounts of precipitation and still get me to work on time.

Occasionally, despite this pre-emptive gathering of data, I am wrong. Yes, you heard it here first, I can possibly be wrong. Stepping outside my front door, I find that my eyes had in fact deceived me and all is not as it appears – thank you Bill Shakespeare – hence I am at once ill-prepared, ill-equipped to face my day as it really is.

This is not at all unlike other aspects of my life; my life's work, my dreams, my distractions or my current or future relationships. I see one splinter of each and I tend to project the rest. Whatever the small piece that I can see clearly from my second-floor vantage point, I quickly and instinctively make that sliver I see into the whole thing. Being as clever as I am, I can expand that minute part to become either a fantasy of over-the-rainbow proportions or weave it into a beastly bete noire. Little chance of ever being right about much with all that weaving going on, n'est pas?

To counter my tendency to misrepresent the slender sliver-splinters the universe shows me, I've considered noticing parts of the whole, just as they are. Whatever part is in front of me is what is. It doesn't need to mean more than it is. Nor does it need to mean less. The one small part is all I need to know in the moment. No happy-ending. No whole world annihilation.

A detail. A look. A word. A decision. A silence. A question or answer. No more, no less. It is what it is. There's a peace in that. No analyzing necessary. Acceptance over aversion. Deep, deep breath.