Today

There are times in our lives when the things we want to be true turn out to be false. The things we believe must and will happen, don’t. The times when the world we thought we understood flips in an instant and we are adrift in a foreign land where we don’t speak the language and what we cherish has no currency. It can happen in our personal lives and it can happen in public life.

In a dream, this would be the time where in an instant the world switches around us but we carry on as if nothing has changed. In these scenarios our brain comforts us with the knowledge that whatever this is, it is fleeting. We will wake up and find that the patched together, nonsensical world we inhabited has disappeared. But what happens when we wake up and find that trying to fry eggs in a hot air balloon was a cinch compared to the way the world has shaped itself while we slept?

From the closed borders of Brexit to the open mouthed grief of mourning lost babies. From the life twisting horrors of active addiction to the shattering fall of 9/11, I can reckon my years in these moments. These are the times where we jump the tracks. These are the moments that punch a hole in complacency, that force a reckoning with beliefs, that ask us to look at things we would rather ignore.

What I have learned from these moments is that when I wake up in an undiscovered country, I need to be still. I need to wait for my brain to catch up with my new reality. I need to honour the weather front of feelings that I am standing in and let them pass through me before I start moving anywhere or doing anything. I need to grieve the life I thought I was going to live before I can tackle the life I have now.

Tomorrow will wait. It always does.

Today is a day for gentleness. Today is a day where it matters more than ever that I do the work of caring for myself the way I hoped we would be able to care for each other. I still hope. There is always hope. I have woken up to hope more times than I have woken up to despair. Today is a day for remembering that.