Morning Meditation

Originally Published May 6th, 2014

Photo by Jim Barnard

Listen, you know those mornings when you wake up and it's not perfect, your sinuses are exploding and your grown kids have six little crises before your coffee is brewed, and, also, the pumpkin enzyme anti-aging mask you put on the night before was—you now realize by the way your face cracks when you open your mouth—just a snip too strong, and none of the deadlines you've been slashing at are within reach, but still for whatever reason (is this called grace?) you've awoken to exactly the day you've always wanted, although the path you took wasn't remotely how you expected it to be; after all, who sets out to survive such things as marital meltdowns and annihilation at the ten-mile mark or hairpin career turns that leap out from the fog at night or kids' occasional efforts to plug their whole selves, hearts and all, into live sockets, or, imagine this!, an empty nest, but here it is, this particular morning, the unfolding of what is not contentment, but bliss, which is its own precise animal, in the same family as what you've imagined (a cat is a cat is a cat), but with its own musculature, its own features, so that if you had been a little slack in your attention, or a little stubborn in your definitions, you could conceivably have failed to recognize the total miracle of it?

I love those mornings.

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