If you could go back to relive one moment, what moment would you relive?

Would you go back in time to a bad experience and make a different decision? Or would you choose to return to a high point again and relive the wonder?

Now consider the future. Think of your fears as well as your hopes.

The past is in the past, the future is coming, but all you really have is the present. Rather than worry about tomorrow or lament the inability to go back to yesterday, allow the energy from your reflections to affect your present. When you consider a regret from the past or a fear of the future, let it motivate you to make good decisions today. In considering a joy now long past or a hope of a bright future, let it inspire you to fill today with joy.

{today’s exercise}

Write a poem about today. What beauty can you find in your present moment, and what beauty can you make in your present moment?

{my process and my poem}

These past few days I have been weary under the weight of my mental to-do list. Last night, rather than take my tired body to bed, I took time to dump the list onto paper, relieving my tired mind of its burden. This morning I woke much lighter, and I am choosing to continue to nurture that lightness as the day continues.

Responsibility weighed on me like the
darkness of night —
intangible, invisible, but likewise invincible.
How to fight
something I can’t focus on or feel?

My mental to-do list scrolled as I sighed.
It replayed again
and again and again, all the things
I had been
putting off until I could manage to think.

To think! I sat there lamenting the lack of
effort put forth
and I sat and put forth no effort to do a single
thing of worth
and lamented my present as well as my past.

That is past, for today I sit only so long
as it takes
to put words on the page, to make physical list
for the sake
of relieving the weight on my mind.

Then I move, and I lift myself up, lifting up spirit, too,
as I stand
to stand down all the tasks that I feared —
take command
of my tasks and my life and take joy in it all.

I take joy in the music of life and of breath,
for the way
it all goes depends less on the things that I do
and I say
and more on the heart of how I face the day.