Just a thought… Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. [Leo Buscaglia]

Welcome to the waning days of July. If you’ve suffered through heat, fire and smoke (as some truly have), you may be happy to see August’s gentler golden days on the horizon. May they bring safe returns to home for so many who are still wondering what they’ll return to. While we here in our area (on BC’s Gulf Islands) have been spared the hardships of those endured by many Canadians this summer, our hearts are with you.

A few people commented on last Monday’s blog when I told you about my Little House effect: the baking, the cooking, the hosting (just one guest – let’s not get carried away) and feeling so deeply grounded in this little tiny piece of a small Gulf Island. By the way, don’t miss the wonderful low-sugar, high protein greek yogurt blueberry muffin recipe in that blog. Rob’s still raving. I guess I’ll have to make more….

If anyone had said to me ten years ago, “You’re soon going to leave Toronto and find yourself in a spot that is small and isolated, where you’ll talk to your dogs more in a day than you do to humans, and you’re going to be so deeply joyful that you cannot fathom it,” I’d have said something akin to “cow droppings.” You know what I would have said.

But experience has taught me – and possibly you – that this is how life works. I’m not saying that this sense of peace that goes to my bones morning ’til night is something that everyone will find, especially after losing a child or someone dear to you, as Rob and I did 11 years ago. I would have neither the insensitivity nor the temerity to suggest it’s even possible! And yet, here we are.

I remember in the early 20-teens, sitting on our small Toronto condo balcony on a warm summer evening and saying to Rob that we were in a blissful bubble at that moment. Yes, my mom had died a few years prior, but we knew that she was at peace, as we had to be with losing her. Our friend Debbie Cooper, whose birthday it is today, had not yet been diagnosed with the colon cancer that would eventually claim her life. At the time of my observation, my radio partnership with Debbie’s husband Mike was joyful and successful, we had a grown daughter who was finding her way in the big wide world of radio (perish the thought today), and Rob and I were solid in our love and marriage. Now, only the last of those things still exists.

So here’s the thing, my friend: the trick is not to seek the bubble, or wish for it, but to know when you’re in it. To also recognize that although all may not be perfect (Mom died suddenly of an aneurysm and 78 was too young for her to go) it’s good. It’s very good.

The other thing that time and life teach us is to know that in that moment of seeming perfection, we also have to acknowledge that, as in all good and all bad, “This, too, shall pass.” One day Rob and I will have to age out of our place here. One of us could get sick or become unable to take the stairs up to our loft bedroom. Anything could happen: fire, falling trees, earthquake. But do we worry about that? No.

Why would we lose one moment of joy, putting our minds towards things that have not happened, and may not happen? It’s human nature, unless we set our minds to be here now. To know that this moment, this one precious life, this blink of an eye in the story of the universe is all we get. This tenuous, glorious bubble.