Perspective is Nine Tenths of The Law

There's a lot of crazy in the world right now.
A while back I had to cut my facebook feed down so that I wasn't constantly being barraged by horrific and disturbing images and news stories.
This doesn't mean that I unplugged from the world completely. In fact, I still read a number of news sources every day, however, I like to be able to filter how much I am beaten over the head by a story.
I do not need to be convinced of wars, climate change, natural and man made disasters, terrible events, and a siege of clowns.
Yup. A siege of menacing clowns.

Sigh.

I am convinced. I am an educated adult who has been living in the real world long enough to know that all that stands between me and abject poverty is a series of poor decisions and some bad luck. I know the only thing that stands between me and a natural disaster is luck, and a little geography, but mostly luck. I know that the only thing that stands between me and the millions of people staring into a the barrel of a news camera after losing someone, or recovering from an attack, or any of the things that happen to everybody in the world in their life at any given moment is pure goddamn luck.

This is why I am grateful for a lot of shit.
Yes, #grateful makes me gag almost as much as #pumpkinspice, but practicing "mindful thanks" is part of the psychotic optimist way I live my life, and it's how I keep the rolling tide of bone crushing depression from eating my will to live. LOL. WE HAVE A LOT OF FUN HERE GUYS.

Yesterday it poured rain.
Like from about halfway through Saturday night until early Monday morning fucking pooooooouuuuuuring. I, like a lot of psychotic optimists, need sunlight. I really really do. I know I'm ruining any chance at goth girl cred I ever had in my entire life by saying this, but I cannot stay stuck inside in the dark all the time. It was fine when I was seventeen and devouring novels set in the 1700's, 1800's, and early 1900's. Sure I could wrap my long tresses around me and gaze forlorn out the window as I lifted my cup of tea to my lips and pretend that I was "otherworldly" and "born in the wrong decade" and whatnot, but I also didn't have a lot of friends, rarely spent time doing anything other than reading or listening to music in the dark (actually miss that part quite a bit), and I was miserable.
I kept waiting to be older so I could get to the good part of my life.
You know, the part where I run through a deserted castle in a gossamer nightgown holding an inexplicably light iron candelabra as my twisted, yet devilishly handsome, beloved grapples with some awful secret he's only just revealed to me, and I simply must dash to the moors to come to grips with who and what I love.
Just the average notebook dreams of a teenage girl really.
Jess & Dr. Jekyll 4-EVA.

Well, I'm here.
If you're a weirdo like me and you read a lot about the dying, you find out that most people have these very important thoughts during their last days on earth.

1. They wish they'd taken more chances.
2. They wish they'd slowed down a little and not worried so much about "what was going to happen tomorrow" instead of the loveliness of "what was happening right then".
3. They pinpointed their thirties and their forties as their happiest decades.

After reading many articles where these three things came up again and again, I decided (being that I am thirty four), I had better get to observing the joy in the here and now.

This is more easily said than done, am I right?
We're so programmed by society, culture, school, workforce, all of it to constantly be worrying if we're hot enough, rich enough, cool enough, informed enough, cultured enough, enough of a mother, enough of a partner, enough of an employee, etc etc etc.
With all that going on inside our heads is it any wonder that we can't focus on the moment and spend all our free time roaming around on our stupid phones either trying to find invisible creatures so we can feel something akin to instant gratification and satisfaction in our autonomous lives? Is it any wonder that people are freaking out about celebrities instead of climate change? It's all distraction.  It's all there designed to make us feel less than and reach for the nearest quick fix that with just the easiest click of a mouse or swipe of a card allows us to pay someone else to give us a glimpse at satisfaction.

We constantly seek escape from our lives because dwelling in the moment means taking the moment for everything it contains. Yes, there will be fear, inadequacy, that nagging dread that somehow, you are doing this life thing wrong, but you also might be surprised by how alive you feel by allowing yourself to feel all of these things and then letting them pass. What comes in their wake? What happens if you embrace that momentary weakness, let yourself feel like you aren't something? Perhaps what comes next is the feeling of what you in fact are.

I was on the train on Saturday morning headed into Boston to teach my current writing class.
I was given a six week long course in which I am supposed to inspire and help my students manufacture a new, fresh story every single week.
My joy at teaching this class during this period of time is abundant.
Whether my students like it or not they have been bombarded with writing prompts about ghosts, haunted houses, ghouls, and general spookiness.
YOU CAN'T JUST GIVE ME A CANDY BAR AND NOT EXPECT ME TO EAT IT PEOPLE!
So I go into work on Saturdays with about eight short scary stories under my arm. I ride the train with a nice hot coffee in my hand, and I purposefully use this baby-free time to go through all the things I like about my life and generally wallow in them. That's right, wallow like a pig in my blessings.

It would be easy to spend the forty minute train ride checking facebook and instagram. It would be easy to spend it checking my lipstick and wondering if my coffee cup is smudging it. And you know what, sometimes I do that. Sometimes I spend ten or fifteen minutes doing those things exactly.
But then I force myself to turn off my phone and stare out the window.

I allow myself to space out, and if I start worrying about bills, belly rolls, or baby futures, I force my brain to start a list of good things that happened this week, and I just add whatever the hell I want to the list.

As I was making this list on Saturday morning, I was staring at the salt marshes, watching as their edges were slowly eaten up by more and more urban sprawl, when I happened to glance up at a plane in the sky, and a tiny little chunk of rainbow caught my attention.

I looked more intently, and I realized that this perfect little hunk of rainbow was just sitting there. It wasn't a trick of the light, or a crack in my sunglasses. It was a perfect little prism suspended between two clouds and with the sun shining through it right then and there, I got to see it.

Stuff like that, my friends, is what I call a present.

I wondered if anyone else could see it. I thought about glancing back at all the people on the train. Was anybody else staring raptly out the window, or were they all going to be diddling their phones and fixing their hair, impatiently tapping their feet and waiting to get into the city?

I decided not to.
It didn't matter if the tiny rainbow was seen by every single person, or if it was experienced solely by me.  
That's the glory of perspective.
It's yours. Maybe the rainbow was only visible from the exact place I was sitting at that exact moment. Maybe it was there all day. Maybe it was only for me. Maybe everyone who rode the train saw it.
It doesn't matter.
Because I saw it, and it made my heart feel a little lighter. It reminded me of magic, existing everywhere all the time, and how it really is observable if you pay attention, and actively push back against the darkness.