One

I’ve long wanted to challenge myself to a daily writing “experience,” for lack of a more inclusive word. To look at something inside and out, upside and down for an extended amount of time would mean to fully come to know it, understand it, grow from it.

But, that’s where I would always stop myself, for a reason that’s quite simple: I didn’t know what that it could possibly be. I didn’t want to be cliche, just another aspiring nonfiction writer looking for just another clever way to put things on paper (or screen). Ironically, it seems that being unique is currently overdone. There’s so much creativity out there, that keeping up can keep an aspiring writer from starting even before she begins. What if I “discover” something that’s already been discovered once, twice, or fifty times? What if there are whole Twitter accounts designed to mock cliched writers, and I’m going to end up the Subject of the Month? What if I put something on my blog with a typo or incorrect grammar, and lose all credibility as someone who has something to say? What if what I have to say means very little to very few? .  . . Well, you get the idea. Stopping before I began.

So I’ve been thinking. A lot. And late at night when I watch the vague silhouette of my ceiling fan wipe its shadows across the ceiling, I’ve come to this. I have to write just because I have to. For me. For me alone. That is my starting point. 

There. That feels better.

A long-term project would have to mean a great deal to me, have me invested to the core, because Lord knows I’m more of a project starter than a project finisher. I made myself concentrate deep into those shadows time and again. When do I feel true joy, a selfish kind of joy that fulfills me enough that I don’t even feel the need to explain it to those around me? Joy that lights me up from the inside out? 

Luckily, after a whole buncha ruminating, I found out something wonderfully surprising. The two things that bring me the most joy can actually relate to each other.

The first. Deconstructing moments through words. Slowing down life and time and looking at just a glimpse, an instance of the beauty of every day, every second. Taking simple events apart by the seams and exploring what each thread is made of. I love that type of writing. I love reading it, and I love writing it. It’s a challenge, but it’s important, because life too often goes by in blurs.

The second. These moments themselves. I’ll be damned if they’re not everywhere! I’ve always known this. Since I was a small girl growing up in Roanoke, Virginia, I have craved beauty. When I was young, I fed my craving through trees and mountains and kudzu racing alongside our Subaru. The smell of the pine tree beside our house stirred something unnameable in me, and the crown of clovers I made with my own fingers enraptured me. Today, decades later, I crave it even more, and I’ve realized, through the long years and the tough times and especially in the great times, beauty is everywhere. 

When I was going through chemotherapy for my breast cancer, I found the most beauty in people. In glances, in hugs, in meals made and carpools run. It was everywhere. And then I realized something even more exciting: I had always known that. I had just forgotten it for a while.

That was five years ago. Now, as years form a gap between the bad=sick and the good=well, I fear I’m losing my grasp on that beauty. Maybe I’m back to being the one doing the carpooling, so I’m focused on too many other things. Perhaps there truly is not enough time in the day to open my eyes and take a peek around.

But there is. There IS time to celebrate these moments, the beauty around us. We just have to MAKE it. Doing so promises outstanding rewards to not just our days, but our lives. These very teeny, tiny moments are what life is made of, where the love lies that keeps us human. And happy.

So, you can imagine my nonsurprise to know that this concept is already a “thing.” Full research and books have been written on the subject. One specialist is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her name is Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D., and she is the author of (among other things), Love 2.0. I stumbled on her concept quite by accident, while I was tutoring high school students this fall. I tutor “college essay writing,” which is really a quite broad way to look at it. Specifically, I meet with kids five times to help them brainstorm ideas, come up with one, and map out what they want to say. I do none of the writing and all of the consulting, if you want to call it that. And I love it.

Two students applied to UNC Chapel Hill this fall, and the essay prompt stopped me, pen in the air, mouth open. It asked students to consider “micro-moments of connection,” as posited by Dr. Fredrickson, and write about such a moment in which they learned something about themselves.

The very thing I love in life: moments of connection, mutual understanding, instantaneous learning of something wonderfully important . . . and writing about it. Unbelievable.

Dr. Fredrickson. My hero.

So it’s in Dr. Fredrickson’s honor that I begin my project, finally culled from the recesses of my mind and of the ceiling fan shadows. I’m going to call it Three Hundred Sixty Seconds. Each day, I will, as the name of my blog suggests, OPEN my EYES, slow down, and let the beauty of the mundane soak in. Some days, I’m sure I’ll write absolute crap. Other days, one person in one location might find one thing to love.

After all, I am absolutely, without-a-doubt convinced that the connections I made, felt, and cherished during my sickness helped me to heal. Ones prior helped me to be who I am. Ones since have helped me immerse myself in the life I lead, head first. These moments have changed me. I believe with my soul that they can change everyone who opens his or her eyes.

As Dr. F says, “The love you do or do not experience today may quite literally change key aspects of your cellular architecture next season and next year - cells that affect your physical health, your vitality, and your overall wellbeing.” These moments count. 

As I write this year, I’m imagining we--you and I--will share similar experiences. Perhaps you’ll laugh at my melodrama (I tend to veer that way), or perhaps we’ll see pieces of each other along the way. I hope so.

That said, ONE second this fall, I discovered a professor who put a name to something I’ve long held precious: moments of sharing, spoken or unspoken, that change who we are in beautiful fragmented ways. 

Three hundred and sixty seconds from now, we will come full circle.

I can’t wait to see where each one takes me. Takes us.