Surviving the Moment

Yesterday was one of those Daycare Days that (normally) has the ability to have me running for cover the moment the last child has left for the day. But after all was said and done, I felt like I had conquered the day (not the other way around).

There were few (if any) successes wrapped within the day. I endured. I pushed through. I dealt with what I had to deal with. And I moved on.

The day was moderately normal until the after-lunch-and-pre-nap-rituals started to play out. Add a trial run for my new (almost) one-year-old that will be soon joining our family? And it was definitely a challenging two hours.

Two hours. Two hours out of ten. That isn't so bad, is it?

There have been days when a rough patch like that would have done me in. I would have folded. I would have admitted defeat and caved in to the pressures of a small piece of the day and let it overtake and overwhelm me.

Those two hours were wrapped inside of eight additional hours of normal. Eight hours of nothing spectacular. Eight hours of following regular, old, tried and true routines. Eight hours of okay made those challenging few hours bearable.

Such is life.

If one piece of your world is out of kilter and hard to bear, it can be endured if the remainder of your life remains stable. One part unruly to four parts stable and predictable equals a better ability to cope.

It is when too many pieces of your world are out of balance at the same time, that a person loses their equilibrium and it becomes to feel so much harder. Answers start to feel illusive when too many variables are unknown.

I have been on the listening end of many conversations where I hear people fighting to regain a status quo within their life. There is a quiet desperation when a person is fighting to keep their head above water. When this puzzle called life becomes so mangled that it feels impossible to figure out how to piece it all together again.

Remain calm. Breathe. Ten deep breaths in and out will buy you at least twenty seconds and will assist in regaining composure. Grab your oxygen mask and 'save yourself first'. Once you are okay, you are in a better spot to 'save others' or regain control over one other piece of your world that is running amok.

If you are very fortunate (as I was in the very core of our Terribly Taxing Daycare Day), nap time will follow the crisis point. A period of complete and utter peace and solitude grounds me in a way that little else does.

Another small thing that made a huge difference in my ability to cope was to focus on the moment. I wasn't trying to squeeze more into my day than time allowed. I had cleared the slate of all-that-must-be-done and all that I had to contend with, was the 'moment' (not everything else that I had hoped to squeeze into the moments that surrounded it).

Ground yourself in ways that you know fill your soul. Nourish yourself with that which you need to sustain the feeling. Every day. You simply never know when you will need to call on those reserves.