“Unwrapping the Present”
A friend of mine sent me an email report on his day yesterday and commented on the one-day-at-a-time slogan of twelve-step programs.
I replied, “Just for today—yes! Imagine someone who gave you a whole bunch of beautifully wrapped gifts and then said, ‘There is a catch: you have to open them all at the same time.’
Suddenly, gifts would become a problem. Indeed, they would become an impossible chore.
Have fun unwrapping today and making good use of it for yourself and for others!”
There was a Family Circle cartoon decades ago that I thought summed it up very nicely. A little girl named Dolly was explaining time to her littler brother, Jeffy. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
But for my A.D.D. mind, a day is way too much for me to unwrap. There is a Christian song entitled “The Next Five Minutes.” It’s a good song and I like it. However, there are days when even the next five minutes is way too much for me to process. I need to concentrate on the next thirty seconds.
Admittedly, not every day or every moment in the day seems to be a good gift. As I was writing this post, regrets for how I lived in the past attacked in the present moment. The people I’ve hurt were all horribly present before my heart’s eye at the same time. Sometimes, the present is a waking nightmare and hell in the here and the now. As someone has said, “Every day is judgment day.”
But even when the present is profoundly painful, it is still a gift to be opened. There is a saying, “Good things come in small packages.” That is true. What is also true is that things that are ultimately good often come in very ugly packages that we don’t want to unwrap.
Still, there are many beautiful gifts in every day—sunrises and sunsets, full moons, and stubborn wildflowers that insist on blooming even in the winter. There is my little dog’s wagging of her stubby tail and my wife’s morning hair that she calls “bed head” but which I call wildly beautiful.
And so, I say to myself and to you, “Have fun unwrapping today and making good use of it for yourself and for others!”
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