(a post from Wisteria & Sunshine from a few months ago…sorry the fonts look a bit small, something in the transfer to this page…enlarging the page helps!)
“Look to this Day!
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!”
-Sanskrit poem
Looking through my long row of daybooks and journals, I pulled out the ones I had used for at least more than a few days. : ) The oldest was a simple cloth-covered journal I took on a trip to England in 1981 and that is where I found the lines from Look to This Day. And it seems to me that those words sum up pretty nicely what we are doing when we turn to our daybooks.
In my younger days, and off and on since, it was mostly to look back on a day or trip or experience, for memory’s sake. I didn’t feel the need to organize my days until my second son was born. Since that time, I would say that my daybooks have ranged far and wide in their purposes…from journaling to household organization to calendars to systems of all sorts to scrapbook-like cutting and pasting….usually with a separate book for each purpose.
Pulling each daybook out of the cupboard, I could remember what drew me to each in the first place and why I gave it up. Sometimes, the reason was a material one…the binder was too wide to carry and use, the paper or designs didn’t please me, it wasn’t adaptable enough and soon felt confining…
More often, or at least as often, I think the reason was within me…overthinking…perfectionism…or just not knowing what I really wanted and needed to be putting down with pen and paper. And I can see now that, for me, too many places and choices (too many containers, really!) kept me from focusing and deepening with the practice of Looking to My Days. It is not everyone’s challenge, is it? Some women seem to rest easy with just grabbing the nearest notebook and getting on with what they need to put down in it. Or they’ve had a life-long love affair with their Filofax. Perhaps they get real pleasure from seeking out a new approach…I know I used to.
At this Rosehip season, tho’, I’d like to hone in, and that is why it feels right to spend more time and thought than I have in the past finding the best “container” for the papery part of life. My cupboard of notebooks is full. I’d like to look back in a few decades and recognize the year I settled in with my own particular way of planning and capturing and chronicling. For my days to feel “well-lived”, I must spend less time figuring things out and where to put them, and more time doing and growing and being.
Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
What has your own journey with pen and paper looked like?
