The Right Thing

Today is our anniversary. Our 22nd anniversary. Never in a million years did I think I would find such solid contentment. I could take those million years to list all the tiny, big, accidental, sweet, purposeful moments you've shared with me to make me feel this way. (Maybe there are a few things I have done that added a smile or two?) Working hard and together, we have ended up just where we wanted to be. Most days now, I have that "pinch me" feeling of overwhelming satisfaction.

But here's the thing: the world is keeping me from celebrating. This morning, I can find no middle ground between this lovely warm commemoration and the brutal, shocking, grizzly events that seem to have no rhyme or reason. I am pacing around feeling only frustration, agitation, discouragement- sentiments that squeeze too hard. 

My struggle brought me somehow to this poem- one of my favorites for years. I was never sure I understood it's implications fully, but today, I rush to embrace that spoken conviction. Finally, with the right man, I want to "sit still...while the "self destructive shake the common wall". 

Do me a favor. At least for today, whatever else happens, let's be grateful for what we have, and hold each other close. Seems like that has to be the right thing.

 

The Right Thing

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will-
The right thing happens to the happy man.
 
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots!-Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man. 

Theodore Roethke