If You Only Had One Day

If I had one day to spend any way I wanted to spend it how would I spend it? The answer to that question really depends on the amount of time I have to think about it. For example, if I had 30 years to think about how I might spend October 23^rd in 2044, then I might come up with a pretty remarkable day. If I have to give an answer for how I'd spend that day in a couple of minutes, well, my answer wouldn't be so hot.

I suppose that much is obvious, right? Is there a reason to hash that out any further? Should I change directions with my thinking and consider something else besides what I’m thinking about now? Maybe I should consider where I am this moment. Let me take a look. Well, it appears that I’m in Amsterdam. I’m sitting alone at a canalside table at an outdoor café on the Prinsengracht. It’s about 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, early October, about 65 degrees, a slight breeze, the sun is shining, a couple of fluffy white clouds dotting the blue sky framed by trees and gabled rooftops along either side of the canal twisting away from me in either direction. I see a bridge at an angle from my sight-line to the southeast. I turn and see a bridge in the distance the other direction as well. There are cyclists riding and walkers ambling over the bridges.

Strollers are meandering by me, a few feet from me. A handsome young couple walking one way, an elderly man wearing a grey cardigan striding gracefully the other way, three middle-aged blond women speaking Dutch have gathered outside the entrance to the cafe, two Indian boys, teenagers, run past the couple. A young woman, probably late 20s or early 30s, sits at the next table. She’s facing me as I sit across my table facing her. It’s only now that I’m noticing her. She has sunshine auburn hair, invisible golden sunglasses, and dark red lips peeled back in a smile with healthy white teeth and penetrating hazel eyes …

… staring right into mine. Really? Huh … really. I’m gazing into her eyes, focused intently on the black holes of her retinas, falling inside, swimming in the sea of her consciousness, letting the waves of her soul breath through me. I’m lost in her … how much time has gone by? A few seconds? An hour? I can’t tell. I don’t care.

I am alive this moment. I am fully alive, aware of being and of the being of others. Specifically, this one other woman sitting across from me, a table removed. She tilts her head just a bit. Her lips curl into a more devilish grin. She squints her eyes and speaks, “I …” She trails off, opens her eyes wider again, and shakes her head a little, as if in disbelief. “I don’t know how to say this. I really don’t. So I’m just going to keep looking into your eyes, okay?”

I listen to her voice and replay her words over and over again. I want to hear that voice forever. I never want to hear anything but her voice whispering to me, “Hello, do you mind if I bathe in your eyes for the rest of the day?”

I say in response, “Yes.” I look into her eyes. She looks into mine. I realize this is how I would choose to spend my day if I could choose to spend it anyway I wanted. Why not? What else could be better than being inside someone while they are inside of you?

…

If life makes you glance around blushing, embarrassed for feeling so alive and free, wondering if others can see how exposed you feel while you’re reading, then I am writing the way I should be. I want you to grab at your throat as a self-protective response to your growing awareness of your vulnerability and then take a deep breath to muster up the courage to let your hand fall to your side, to tilt your head back smiling while you close your eyes, allowing yourself to feel how you know you can feel when you are alone or with a lover; tender, passionate, curious, alive, your body tingling, craving specific sensations like a warm bath or a gentle caress, the wind blowing through your hair while you stand on the beach looking out at the slowly dimming sky at sunset, the colors shifting from pulsing neon to soft pastels, everything inching toward darkness, filling you with a sense of longing and loss, the loss of light and color into the dead of night, time passing like a haunting, tormenting you with the awareness of your total lack of control over what is essential for living: the air, the water, the land, food, shelter, companionship, health, and love.

I’ve been enlivened and tortured by a desire for autonomy and a need for security.  Our needs, our wants, they direct our lives in certain ways related to our circumstances and our understandings of what we think will best satiate our desires while also meeting our needs. In a sense, I want to write an open letter to the world, a letter filled with ridiculous naïveté, the purity and innocence of a child, an unconditional embracing of all. But I also want to admonish the world for being petty and ridiculous, for wasting time, for wasting life as if it were a renewable resource.

As a species, it is. For individuals like you and me, it is not. This is it and I’m surprised there are so few who feel “My God! This is really it? Why are we still waiting for Godot? He never comes. Godot, where are you? Why can’t I find you? Why am I looking for you when my companion is right here with me? Why am I not making love to him or her right now, why am I not looking into the eyes of someone else, anyone else, while smiling as I appreciate the willingness to allow me to simply gaze? Why am I not on a beach somewhere looking at that sunset I just read about? Why don’t I feel that longing like a suffering? Why do I so rarely feel alive?"

We continue cycling and recycling the same tired days that go on endlessly with no greater purpose than to continue fulfilling the tasks that allow us to survive and sometimes even enjoy life but are otherwise hollow. We fear silence because there’s so little within us to fill us. 

I am living a life that never stops to catch its breath. The imposition of structure feels like the formation of a prison. I prefer the chaotic incoherence of freedom ... "Huh? Where did that come from? That didn't follow. Are you suggesting that I embrace incoherence?" Yes, please do. Add unpredictability to the mix. It's so much more interesting to watch incoherent unpredictability than daily routines. Yeah, you might lose everything and wind up homeless, but it isn't until you lose everything that you understand anything.