My best life

Monday was one of those glorious late-February days that come along once in a never but this year have warmed the hearts and toes of many a Michigander for some reason I’ll leave to the meteorologists to decipher.

My to-do list looked at me crosswise, the items I’d dutifully promised to cross off still flagrantly uncrossed. I didn’t care. It was nice out. I grabbed a book and slipped out the back door.

I relish a walk that takes me past the yards and homes and hidey-holes in our neighborhood. I love strolling along, my eyes taking in the textures and the trinkets of other people’s lives, occasionally running across – not literally – an emboldened squirrel willing to play hide-and-seek with me on a tree trunk.

But I also love a good reading walk. Something about the rhythm of striding down a sidewalk makes the words of a good book better. You get some weird looks from other pedestrians once in a while, but nobody really minds as long as you don’t bump into a telephone pole.

I was getting ready to cross a street when a woman out walking her dog approached along the far sidewalk. We exchanged smiles as our paths crossed. She gestured cheerfully at my book.

“You’re just living your best life,” she said. “I love it.”

We went our separate ways, she with her cute doggo, I pondering what she’d said.

She clearly was a book person, herself. Book people recognize a good place to read when they see one. Her smile and friendly eyes said walking while reading struck her as something worth doing.

Interesting. In that simple moment, open book in my hands and sidewalk sliding under my feet, I was doing something someone else thought looked pretty doggone appealing.

*A brief side note, here: I’m currently finishing the book “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. It’s a serious nonfiction book written by an attorney who has fought fiercely against cruelty and injustice in our legal system. The book is intelligent, persuasive, compassionate, and deeply human, and it made me cry. I highly recommend it.

Living my best life, the woman had said.

I worry a lot that I’m not, in fact, living a very good life. I regularly feel like, somewhere along the way, I missed the instruction sheet everyone else seems to have gotten – the one that tells humans how to act, how to parent, how to be a Good Human.

If I were, indeed, living as best I can, I think I’d be kinder. I’d be less prideful. I’d have given my kids more wisdom as they grew and cooked better meals. I’d have dedicated my days to work that changed lives for the better instead of arriving at the half-century mark feeling like I’d contributed no more than about three years’ worth of meaningful work to the world.

I should do better, the voice inside my head tells me, harshly and without ceasing.

The woman with the dog wasn’t talking about that kind of good life, of course.

“Living your best life” is one of those expressions that pops up out of nowhere (the internet attributes it to either Oprah or a rapper, but who knows) and suddenly enters everyone’s vocabulary, not meaning a whole heck of a lot and running the very high risk of becoming exceedingly annoying.

Sure, it’s subject to overuse, and if you wanted to, you could say all kinds of negative things about the phrase. But, with my book on the sidewalk, I found myself warmed by it, at least for a moment.

Maybe I don’t do life as well as I’d like.

But, in that moment, I was doing something purely because it made me happy. And it felt good.

We’re never going to get it all right. Even if we tried our darndest, we’re still sinful beings who are going to stumble and fall and do dumb things and never measure up to whatever standard we set for ourselves.

But, in the midst of that, we get to experience joy.

I forget about joy sometimes. On gloomy days, when nothing seems right and I’m kicking myself harder than usual or throwing myself a little pity party because things aren’t going my way, I sink into a circle of never-gonna-get-better and refuse to consider happiness as an option.

And then a robin twitters from the top branch of a tree and your heart does a little skip and you remember: ah, yes. This.

Moments of joy may not last, and they may be brief. But we may as well dive into them with arms wide open, appreciating them for all they’re worth.

Walks with books, or with dogs. A warm cat purring on your lap. The cardinal outside your window, tilting his head this way and that as though he’s inspecting you. Your favorite can’t-resist song coming on Pandora as you’re writing a blog post (“Staying Alive,” obviously). Getting up, cranking up the volume, and having a little dance party in the kitchen. That first, delicious moment when you crawl into bed and nestle your head into the pillow.

Good moments. Little gifts. Bursts of joy that strengthen us for the battle.

Yesterday I wrote at my favorite Jackson coffee shop for a while. Near my table, a woman had taken ownership of one of the shop’s comfy-looking armchairs. An adorable hat with 1920’s vibes on her head, she had her booted feet propped up on one arm of the chair and was engrossed in a hardbound book that looked like it smelled good.

I had the urge to go tap her on the shoulder and tell her she was happy. That she was living, at least for the moment, her best life – that she should see it, feel it, soak it in and cherish it.

I didn’t, of course. I would only have interrupted her happy moment. Plus, people don’t just point out each other’s happiness. That’s weird, right?

Then again, maybe we’d be better off if we reminded each other to see the snippets of good in our lives so we don’t miss them, at least not quite so often.

Either way, I think it’s OK I didn’t go tell my coffee shop reader she was experiencing joy.

I’m pretty sure she already knew.