It is election night, or the day after, depending on when you’re reading this.  I will likely be up way too late watching the results come in.  Morgain will have taken a (prescribed by her doctor) sleeping pill, and intentionally sleeping through it. It really is like a train wreck for me.  I can’t look away.  But this post was written on Devil’s Night, from the comfort of my couch.  My days of TPing the neighbors is over, maybe.  I sat this year out anyway.  So, the results of whatever is happening as you read this are still a mystery to me.

This year has been hard on me, just like everyone else.  But a part of me has just been rolling with it.  I have caught myself in a few moments of trying to force things.  That’s undeniable and understandable.  I think it’s necessary sometimes to push too hard, then step back and take a look around.  It’s about me exploring boundaries, working things out, and trying to come to grips with today’s new reality.  Some of the relationships I value most have withstood a lot of pushing and pulling and rebounding.  There comes a point, after so many struggles together, you realize that person is always going to be there, and so are you.  You’re going to grow alongside each other.  Life and relationships are messy and imperfect, but that’s the beautiful part.

But that’s not what I meant to write about.  I want to write about the long haul, which I suppose is related. 

I often say that I live my life on that fine line between carrots and carrot cake.  It’s a super weird place to be in to be told that you have a terminal illness, but yet are living a relatively good life with it five years later.  What do you do with that?  I know that I should be keeping myself healthy,  paying bills, and doing all the responsible things -  eating my carrots.  But the other half of me wants to completely live in the moment, yelling, “Eat the cake!  Who knows what tomorrow will bring!”  Basically, I’m all over the place.  But in general, I try to end each day on a positive, letting go of whatever didn’t get done, and righting any wrongs I feel I have made during the day.  That whole “don’t go to bed angry” thing is practiced on the regular over here.  I will apologize to my children or my husband at bedtime because, seriously, who cares?  Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m wrong, but whatever it is, it’s probably not worth anybody crying themselves to sleep over.  I love them, and they need to know that at the end of the day, above all else.

The election results matter.  They matter a lot.  But they aren’t a fix for anything.  This isn’t an end, it’s a step in a journey.

Nobody is coming to save us.  Every time I say this, people think I’m being super bleak.  It’s not meant to be a doomsday saying.  It’s meant to be freeing, really.  When I realized nobody is coming to save me and a great end to the suffering wasn’t ever going to come, it was a huge weight off my shoulders.  I was free to do me, not later, but right now.  It means we get up every day and we do what we need to do, what we want to do, and we don’t wait for anybody to give us permission or show us the way or lead us to what’s next.  And at the end of the day, we set it all down, we learn, we grieve, we celebrate, we tell our loved ones how we feel, and then we let it all go to rest and pick up again tomorrow.  Most days feel like muddling through to me.  It’s just wax on, wax off, with a few extras thrown in for variation. But just like the Karate Kid, the wax on, wax off is actually practice.  So when a moment of clarity and direction comes along, I just know it’s right.  I know it because it’s come from days, weeks, months, years of just starting again every day and trying to move forward until I stumble upon the next right thing.

The means matter.  The daily struggle matters.  The getting up every day and doing the best you can and the caring for your people matter.  You may never reach the end.  Most of us don’t.  We muddle.  We push.  We rebound.  And that’s a life.  The means is the life.  Some days we eat our carrots.  Some days are meant for cake.

We’ve already voted.  What’s done is done.  Now we have to go to bed and be ready to pick it up again tomorrow, no matter what has happened.  If you are looking at an end, and there are those suffering and hurting around you, it may be time to reevaluate the means.    Did we laugh, eat, love each other, and do right by our neighbors along the way?  To me, the relationships built, the community shared, the struggle lifted-, if only for a moment-, are glimpses of a life well lived. There are songs and poems expressing this so much better than I have, but I have done my best here, and that’s good enough.

I love you all.  Sleep tight.  I’ll see you in the morning.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not expected to complete the work, but neither are you permitted to abandon it.” -Talmud