Now, Today

A few weeks ago I found a cache of head shop and ’70s costume jewelry in my parents’ attic while moving paintings. The amount of Cancer Zodiac symbols and crabs suggested that they belonged to my Aunt Elise, who passed away from complications with multiple myeloma in 2012.

Every young woman I know has a bag like this full of colorful things she’s outgrown, which we tell ourselves we’ll donate to the next church fair or give to a young relative or neighborhood kid. Something that got to me, though, was a small bag that held the beginnings of a charm bracelet, with only the crab attached and charms for graduation, Nassau, and Bermuda still in their retail packaging. I showed them to my brother, and he felt the same gut-punch of sadness, as these felt like a metaphor for the traveling and life she didn’t get to finish. It’s not like Elise died a young woman who never left her home town – she actually did get to travel and see more of the world than most people – but I think we all thought she had so much more time, and no one expected it would be the end when it was.

Elise’s last international trip was to India, and the last time I saw her, she told me all about it and showed me her photos. Her excitement and insistence that I see it for myself were a large part of why I felt so compelled to go this year, and I will always be thankful for the experience. I remembered her photos from Jaipur and Agra especially and realized we had walked in the same places and seen some of the same things. As much as I wished I could talk with her about it, especially on what would have been her birthday, I felt like she was with me and I made a little promise that I’d bring her everywhere I traveled, in case I got somewhere she hadn’t had a chance to see.

When a friend recently visited New York, we talked a bit about the immediacy of experience. He said that often he doesn’t take photos because they get in the way of really seeing something fully in the moment. I admitted to being something of a compulsive picture-taker, not necessarily with the intent of ever sharing them on social media or what have you, but more because as an artist, I am something of an image hoarder, and I will literally think obsessively for days about the color of a door in a town I visited over a decade ago and feel intensely grateful and relieved when I can see my photo of it again. (If you’re friends with me on Facebook, Instagram, or Flickr, it may seem that I post an absurd amount of photos, but I assure you, they’re just a drop in the bucket.)

As we went through the Museum of Feelings and a part of lower Manhattan fairly inundated with tourists, we saw people posing for goofy smiling selfies in front of the 9/11 Memorial, taking photos of the Tiffany’s near the Stock Exchange (still not sure why), and generally doing everything they could to prove my friend’s point that they were so busy documenting their moments that they weren’t really having them. It was the instant nostalgia that has permeated this time, where even as they were continuing to see a sight, they were getting likes and feedback from loved ones back home experiencing it already as a memory.

I kept thinking about that compression of time and experience, and I remembered another friend who had wanted to go fishing with me and my father in New Jersey so she could have a photo of herself holding a fish. She described it so vividly and struck the pose so perfectly that I could all but see the culmination of an experience she hadn’t had, a fish she hadn’t caught yet giving its life for what would become a fun memory to share with other people on Facebook. My father said the water was choppy and fishing had been really hit or miss lately, so we were equally likely to spend the afternoon getting tossed about and not even get a bite. I watched all enthusiasm for fishing drain from my friend’s face as she said, “Oh nevermind, we can go to the beach instead.”

I check myself periodically to make sure I am not living too much in the past or future, and as someone prone to obsessing over both, that’s not an easy thing to do. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at being present in the moment I’m in, but I’m also seeing that not all experiences have the fullness of their meaning instantaneously. I jumped off a cliff into a glacial river in Iceland, mostly because it was probably the only chance I’d have to do so in a safe way. A friend on the trip took a video that I never posted, in part because I haven’t figured out how to edit out where I asked the rafting guide, “Are you sure you can’t just push me??” It wasn’t until I got home and was telling the story to wide-eyed friends who knew how abjectly terrified I am of heights that I realized what a big deal it was to me. One friend pointed out that I was shaking as I was telling the story, and I admitted that I had no idea I had that much power to overcome such an incredible fear and was only just realizing how profound a moment it was to launch myself off a cliff.

(And before you get too impressed, it wasn’t that high a cliff, and my mother had already gone before me so she could taunt me if I chickened out. I’m not that brave.)

Still, I keep thinking about the power we have to shape our experience, either in interpretation or by willing it into being. Recently I attended a marketing webinar, where the speaker said to accomplish goals and reach targets, there was not really any special formula or secret beyond deciding what you wanted to do and then doing it. “Now,” she said, “Today. Pick the first task toward your goal and start doing it right now. It’s the only way to get there.”

I thought about a scene from Sleepless in Seattle when Meg Ryan’s character makes a distraught phone call to her friend played by Rosie O’Donnell:

BECKY
Did you talk to him?

ANNIE
I couldn’t do it. How did I get here?

BECKY
You told a lie and got on a plane.

ANNIE
That’s not what I mean.
(beat)
I’m going back over there tomorrow and talk to him. I am.

BECKY
Okay. Good. Goodbye.

ANNIE
Becky?

BECKY
What?

ANNIE
Is this crazy?

BECKY
No. That’s the weirdest part about it.

(If you haven’t watched Sleepless in Seattle recently enough to be able to quote it, I seriously suggest remedying that ASAP – it’s an excellent holiday movie and generally one of the more perfect sappy rom-coms of all time.)

A lot of the things I want to do in life seem so far-fetched and abstract that I tell myself they can’t be done or I have no idea how to even start. But maybe it is as easy as telling a lie (metaphorically) and getting on a plane, which is to say, just deciding what I want to do and doing it.

When I’m making plans for the next year(s) and the massive changes I’m making in my life, it gets daunting to stare down the whole process and feel like someone like me can’t do these things. I get so consumed in the minutiae of how things will happen and when to switch to a contingency plan that it is like micro-documenting my experience in anticipation, rather than stepping back and seeing how it unfolds. It’s an incredible exercise in self-control to just breathe and trust the process, to be fully present, but it’s giving meaning back because I feel like I’m finally awake and paying attention.

It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the urgency of not knowing how much time we have in life with making sure to do the things I want to do as well as I can. Here is where I must take a page from Elise’s book and employ the “just get on the plane” mentality. She didn’t wait until retirement or when things were “more settled” to do the things she wanted. She got on planes, she had experiences in the moment, and I hope, she lived her life the way she wanted to. She wanted to see the Taj Mahal her whole life and made sure to do it. And now, so did I.

I feel like I can do whatever I put my mind to if I just focus on one thing at a time, now, today. And really, it’s not crazy. That’s the weirdest part about it.