Last weekend, someone asked me how my week was going to be.
An innocent enough question.
But it pissed me off.
My initial impulse was to answer “good.” I’m a pretty happy person nowadays. I like my job. I enjoy my after-work activities (lately watching Star Trek: Next Generation and writing or crafting). Why wouldn’t it be good?
Then annoyance kicked in.
How the hell do I know? I thought last week would be good, and then my cousin was killed in a triple homicide.
Kind of took the shine off of the week.
Then a more stable thought entered.
The great thing about life is you have to live it.
I don’t want to postulate how my week will go. I want to live it. I want to give it a push towards happiness and positivity. But if something happens that makes me feel some of the less desirable emotions, I want to give those experiences space too.
I want to live life. All of it.
I realize that I might have been testy because I’m still grieving. That question brought up in the impermanence of life and a reminder that I and/or any of my loved ones might not be here tomorrow. But even when those losses occur, my week will be.
Being is a pretty terrific state, even with the painful moments.
I’ll take away Shakespeare’s debate, and I’ll say: to be is the only way.