He heard the melodies. He felt the rhythms. He smelled fresh lilacs and tasted mint. And all the world burst forth from on the page.
Tensions, pent up, eased. His shoulders relaxed, having never sensed their tightness.
The cascading waterfall in his chest slowed to a trickle.
“So, this is peace,” he whispered, and was well.
A respite from the rush of frantic need, the quiet nearly overwhelmed him until he sank into it and allowed it to surround his troubled soul, to comfort him with its nothing. He scarcely had noticed the weight until it was lifted, and now this freedom astonished him with its lightness.
He heard the scratch at the corner of his consciousness, and he knew the relief was temporary. One by one, the troubles would settle on his shoulders again, but now he knew what it felt like to shrug them off, and perhaps he would learn to shrug.
One dog licked her back paw, the other chewed a bone. The washing machine whirred from the next room.
It was the first day of the rest of his life.
He scoffed under his breath. “Cliche much?” he muttered. But it was true. He had awakened very much aware of his mortality. His neck ached. He walked slowly and gingerly through the house. His body, never particularly athletic or toned, felt worn.
He had listened while Bob Goff read his book Everybody, Always over the last couple of days. It was a book about love and forgiveness and the supernatural power of Christ, and overcoming through persistence and that forgiveness and love.
“Persistence,” he scoffed, thinking of his lack there. Still, today was the first day of the rest of his life.
He remembered writing about the second day, a long time ago — how if you stumble on the first day, then you can start on the second day of the rest of your life, or on the third day, and all you’ve lost are a couple of days.
Or — and the insight crashed against him like an ocean wave on a windy day — was the idea all along to treat every day like the first day? The first day of any new venture is full of promise and hope and energy and “You can do this” because nothing has gone wrong — perhaps a little bit of anxiety because it’s new and unknown, but there’s all the excitement of a new beginning, a new hope, a new direction.
“Today is the first day …” and it’s always today. Every day is a new first day, a new promise, and a new hope.
Every day is the first day of the rest of your life — and suddenly he was excited, and he knew how to live, and to love. He wasn’t sure he could be that refreshed and ready every day, but it was the anxious optimism of the first day on the job, the eagerness of the first day of vacation, and the joyousness of a wedding day. It was the discovery of a cliche turned over and examined to find a new meaning, perhaps its intended-all-along meaning.
He saw at last, and every day became the first day from then on.
We set aside this day every year to honor and remember the people who have died in war. From time to time someone points out that the best way to honor the fallen is to work to ensure there is no war.
But war goes on, and perhaps it always will as long as we turn for leadership to disturbed people who would violently take land from and kill those they perceive as enemies.
Life is a precious gift, too precious to leave in the hands of death merchants. To honor the victims of war, may we raise a chorus of “Never again. May we resolve our future differences in peace.”
