Good Morning

Recently I had a fitful night of worry, tossing and turning, my thoughts uncontrollably circulating downward.  The impending move to the Pacific Northwest had me anxious.  It was two o’clock in the morning and I found myself counting all the things that could go wrong.  I thought, it’s one thing to have moved to Chicago at age 22, quite another to return to Seattle at 68.

My mind whirled and twirled like water looking for a drain.

• Would we have enough?
• Have we prepared properly?
• Would we survive in a new world?

This anxiousness is nothing new for me; I’ve lived with it my whole life, an inheritance from a bloodline of chronically anxious people.  I awoke in an emotional knot.

Then something strange happened.  Marsha kissed me and greeted me with the words, “Good morning.”

I was startled.  Good morning?  I should say not!  It seemed to be a very bad morning.  But was it?

Marsha had unwittingly planted in my mind an altogether different thought, suggesting the morning was good and my day might be saved.

This encounter set in motion in me a chain reaction of questions.

• Why am I often a prisoner of my thoughts?
• Why am I subject to the dictates of the boogeyman?
• Why did I so often feel I could not trust the future, that a storm always lurked upon the horizon, and that I would never have enough?

We Irish have an expression for our dark thinking: the “Celtic Twilight,” a latent belief that the potato famine never ended and will go on forever.  We live in a perpetual state of want; enough is never enough.

But Marsha’s greeting had gotten hold of me and I found myself praying for a way off this dead end road.

So as I was riding on a Chicago L train for what was to be my last visit to the Loop an elderly lady took the seat next to me.  I glanced at her and was reminded of the face of an old woman I had met some 40 years earlier in an impoverished barrio on the outskirts of Lima, Peru.

At the time I was working for a nonprofit intent on starting an economic development project in the village and Rosita was the barrio’s elder stateswoman.  I was trying  to convince Rosita to allow us to initiate a project to raise the standard of living among the people who lived there.  My argument was the quality of life could be improved if more money was brought into the local economy.  More money, happier people, right?  Nobody has enough, right?  It made great sense to me given my chronic condition of NEVER having enough of anything.

All the while I was listening to children’s laughter in background.  Rosita was raising her grandchildren after her daughter died of tuberculosis. While I was making my thoughtful argument for a better life I couldn’t escape the pure joy that surrounded me.  The kids were chasing an old dog around the clay floor all the while squealing with glee.  Rosita had a grin on her face and looked as if the she had not a care in the world.

The juxtaposition of such rank poverty and utter jubilation was amazing to me.

• This was not an unhappy woman living in poverty.
• These were not unhappy children living in poverty.
• This was not an unhappy home in the midst of poverty.

When I spoke to her of how much her life would be improved with more economic development, she looked at me with a smile while she shook her head.  I could see she was struggling to say something polite.  She finally tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “I think we have enough.”  Rosita then described her experience with those who had signed on to the “more is better” thought. She said once this thought sets in an insidious cycle gets started and spreads like a contagious disease.  No one would ever have enough while there was more to want.  Soon all joy and happiness would be lost for want of more.

She then looked at me with a steely eyes and said, “It is I who determines when enough is enough!”

 

There was nothing more to say.

• Rosita was in charge of her thoughts.
• Rosita had no interest in fantasizing about having more.
• Rosita decided to be happy, not sad, with what she had.

Where I saw scarcity, Rosita saw abundance. She was living the Good Life, while I was living an impoverished life.  She had mastered the art of turning all her mornings into good mornings and all her days into a good days.

My memory of Rosita reminded me the potato famine was long over and I no longer needed to live as if I were starving.

Good mornings are born out of decisions not circumstances and good days are mine to have

• Whatever my condition,
• Whatever challenges I face,
• Whatever I have or have not.

Just A Thought…

Pat

Copyright © 2017 Patrick J. Moriarty. All Rights Reserved.

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