Glimmering Through the Day

A different orientation

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

That phrase, “Just getting through the day,” has always seemed like a lousy way to live, and yet that’s often my sense of how it’s done, how we talk about it, how I do it, using little stepping-stones of pleasure to keep me moving along. I feel the same sense of sad grimness when I hear someone say coffee is the reason they get out of bed. But here, again, I get it. And I drink decaf! It makes it seem like there has to be a hook to get us on board with living.
 
This is confusing because, excluding the exceptional times that promise everything and the dark times that threaten to take it all away, why should ordinary life be something we just want to get through? Very odd for a species that throws all its effort into living as long as possible. On the other hand (I’m about to state the obvious), life is pretty hard. It takes so much effort. For instance, right now as I search around for how I’m going to take us from “life is hard” to “glimmers,” I’m reaching in my mind for the kombucha downstairs in the refrigerator to help me. Kombucha is my 10 am stepping-stone. But it’s only 9:29 which means I will have to pep talk my way through this, which is more effort. (Okay, Elizabeth, keep going. Hang in there. You can do it.)
 
Life is like that, all day long, one effort after another, whatever effort looks like in each of our lives on any given day. Even when the efforts are exciting ones, ones we love and that rev us up, we may still have something inside reaching for some form of security because part of life is waiting for the next shoe to drop. We have to bear up under the constant possibility that it could all come crashing down. This is where glimmers come in to save the day.
 
Glimmers…they are the opposite of triggers. You know triggers, we all know triggers, that nuclear flash in the brain when some threat trips the switch, and we are catapulted right back into the original wound of hurt or fear or whatever our wound may be.
 
Unlike the jolt of triggers, glimmers are all that ordinary space in between. The everyday spaces of tending to life, getting work done, meeting responsibilities, savoring the coffee, kissing your children, getting in some cardio, looking at the sunset, stirring the soup, making the phone call, reading the book. They are the spaces of okay-ness when there is nothing actively wrong. They are the small moments of goodness or beauty. They are the times of release when your heart rate settles. You may still have the trouble which will require your care, but in this moment, it’s okay. You’re breathing. No one’s bleeding.
 
Glimmering is a different orientation to life. Instead of seeing the punctuation marks of pain and threat as the high points of focus when looking forward or backward across the expanse of your day, you see the spaciousness of how much is actually okay. How the day holds great stretches of it’s okay…it’s okay…it’s okay. In photographic terms, the negative space becomes the positive.
 
Glimmers may sound fanciful, silly even, but they are dead serious, what you call on especially when you are projecting. Instead of spinning out while waiting for word on how bad things might be, glimmers hold you in place, direct your attention to the coffee, to the warm air on your skin, to your feet are on the ground, to the underlying heartbeat of all that is calm.
 
How do we want to do it? Do we want to get through the day or glimmer through it on the wings of those moments of peace, space, clarity, still, calm, amazement, awe, faith, belief, relief, and gratitude? Potential moments tucked in here, tucked in there . We can look for them and revel. We need them all…the rapture and amazement of awe…the humility and redemption of gratitude… the spaciousness and peace of glimmers.
 
Glimmer on,
 
E

Glimmers-triggers