Monday morning cup of thoughts

"the unfinishable projects of our lives"

photo courtesy of Pixabay

One of the growing number of Substack newsletters that I follow is Maybe Baby by Haley Nahman. Her post this Sunday touched on a subject I’ve been giving much thought to lately… the grace of simple moments.

I wanted to share a few of her words as we move into this new week. They gave me comfort and I hope you might feel the same. You can read the entire post here.

These days I really do believe that chores give my life meaning. Not just because they present texture and struggle and a necessary counterpart to rest (all true), but because maintenance is in itself profound. Caring for ourselves, for other people, for our homes, for plants and other animals—these are the unfinishable projects of our lives. We do them over and over not to conquer them, or for personal gain, but to maintain and nourish them, with no greater expectation. Given how swayed humans are by the pursuit of growth, wealth, ownership, and power, I think this is very sweet and pure. Almost spiritual.

At their best, chores remind me that life is worth living not because it grows and grows and grows in a linear way, but because it’s cyclical: always starting over, ending, and starting again. Fall always reminds me of this, too. Appreciating this has been one of the more profound shifts in my perspective. I used to feel a lot of pleasure from imagining that everything was going to be perfect in the future. Now I feel grateful that pleasure returns again and again in small doses, and that meaning is available to me through the cycle itself. Bad things always end, and good things always come back. It can be a lot less complicated than we make it.