"I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it."--Marshall McLuhan

I began reading a book today titled Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally, by Patti Digh.  I stumbled across the book this morning when I received an email from Amazon.com advertising 100 Kindle books for $3.99 or less.  Always looking for a good deal on a good read, I glanced inside this book and was hooked when I saw that it contained daily writing exercises.  I also appreciated the idea that Digh wrote this book after taking care of her stepfather during the last 37 days of his life as he died from lung cancer.  The author challenges her readers to consider what they would do if they were told they had only 37 days to live.  She also invites readers to live more “intentionally.” 

I am one who spends a lot of time inside her own head.  But to be honest, I have always been pretty happy in Cheryl Land.  I like reading and thinking and making connections and writing as I try to make sense of the world around me and my place in it.  From the small bit of the book I have sampled, it seems that I have found a kindred spirit in Digh.  I am not big on making New Year’s Resolutions.  I don’t consider any one day as being more important than any other.  Admittedly, I sometimes play along, for example, elongating the celebration of my January 8th birthday by proclaiming the first week of each year as the Birthday Week.  But deep down, there is not a party going on inside me.

I chose to read this book and interact with it each day because I don’t like allowing myself to use the excuse that I am too busy with the details of my life to live it intentionally.  That means that no matter what I am doing, I should make sure I am doing it with keen awareness.  For example, when I communicate with others, I try to make sure I really make a connection with them, that I look them in the eye and really listen to them.  I think it is just this kind of intensity and focus that makes for good writing, too.
The first exercise in Digh’s book is to write for 10 minutes on the following quote by Chinua Achebe:  “We create stories and stories create us. It is a rondo.”

This goes back to my belief that writing about one’s life leads to a deeper understanding of life.  So, in the spirit of the book, I set the timer and I wrote for 10 minutes.  Such raw writing is really only helpful to the writer, so I will not share it here, but I will share where my mind traveled.  I considered how much writing about my life has changed the way I perceive my life.  It forces me to analyze relationships and audience.  I have written a lot about my mother, but I was not brave enough to do so while she was still alive.  I acknowledge this and ask myself--what should I be writing about today which I am not brave enough to look directly in the eye?  This is definitely something I will make myself look at.

Achebe refers to this process as a rondo (rondeau in French).  I could not remember exactly what the rhyme scheme is in this form of poetry, but I did remember that it is a form which has a refrain and comes full circle.  I also remembered that one of the most famous rondeaus ever written is the World War I poem, "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The author, McCrae, was a field surgeon in WWI and he wrote the poem in an attempt to deal with the horrors he experienced during the war.  It never occurred to him that it would be published.  In fact, he was so dissatisfied with it that he threw it away, but a fellow officer saved it and sent it to a few newspapers in England where it was initially rejected and eventually published in 1915.

Even more vividly than McCrae’s comparison of blood droplets and poppies, I recall a simple series of events that happened to me when I was in sixth grade.  I lived in Canada at the time and we had been making paper poppies for everyone to wear to our Remembrance Day program.  (Remembrance Day, is a memorial day that has been observed there since the end of World War I to pay tribute to members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty.  It is observed on the eleventh of November to recall the official end of World War I at 11:00 that day.)  I was a very shy child, so instead of reading or singing in the program, I was in charge of making the decorations.  Just as we were finishing up for the day and starting to clean up, the school custodian, Mr. Rhodes, a cranky old man who limped around and glared at the kids without ever saying much, walked over to us and started sweeping up the bits of red paper that dotted the library floor around us.  We were all a little afraid of him because he never smiled and he was always muttering things we couldn’t quite hear.

As he swept up the paper scraps, he found one whole poppy that had slipped off the table.  He picked it up, held it in the palm of his hand and looked at it a moment before he placed it in my hand and looked me right in the eye.  My heart pounded and we were frozen there, me and the elderly maintenance man, tentatively connected by four perfect petals of red paper.  It’s funny how some moments last longer than the time it takes them to pass—charged as they are with fear, or tension, or the unknown.  Over 40 years later I can still see his blue eyes behind the thick lenses of his bifocals, and the way, just before he dropped the flower into my hand, his face softened almost imperceptibly for a just sliver of a second.

A few days later, on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month, everyone in the school, along with our families and members of the surrounding community, gathered to honor our veterans and heroes.  We sang songs, read stories, and at the end of the program my English teacher, Mr. Albon, read the poem, “In Flanders Fields.”  It was a touching tribute, and I still remember every word of that poem—and I remember, during the moment of silence that naturally followed, seeing Mr. Rhodes, our school’s custodian, as he stood at the back of the room in his vintage Army uniform, very quietly, with tears streaming down his face.

I live most days in relative mental seclusion because that is my comfort zone.  And while I don’t have to be the one to read life’s stories or sing life’s songs, it is absolutely not acceptable for me to shut myself off to the other people in my life, even if we are only connected for a few seconds, memorable or otherwise.  So much goes on around us every moment of every day that we are not aware of.  So, even though I proclaim not to believe in making resolutions, I am making one:  I will push myself outside myself.  Who knows what I will discover?

Joyce Carol Oates says, “We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone—its value is incontestable.”   Powerful words.