Magic in the Everyday

I keep looking back at my photos from Patagonia. The last days of carefree bliss in late February before the world turned upside down. Only five months ago, as I backpacked long miles through valleys sculpted by glacial rivers and across stretching grasslands dotted with grazing guanaco, my mind wandered to the summer. I would quit my job in June, load up the car and move from DC to Seattle, and Raja would join me and we’d leave our long distance relationship behind on the East Coast. We’d apartment hunt, maybe climb Rainier, and then I’d start grad school at the University of Washington. I played this imagined summer over and over in my head. I thought about it while resting in patches of sunlight in Parque Patagonia’s primeval forests and as I fell asleep cocooned in my sleeping bag.

Of course, that’s not what happened this summer. And the truth is, I don’t know when any of that will happen. I’ve deferred grad school until next fall, but given how much has changed in the past months, it seems hard to envision even what this fall will bring. As someone who is always dreaming about the future, always planning the next trip itinerary, and constantly checking my PTO balance to figure out when I can next head off, coronavirus has been a very real reminder that plans are just intentions. That nothing is guaranteed. That our realities can shift in minutes. That today, this hour, this moment are really all we have.

A few months ago, Raja suggested that we end each day by writing one thing we’re grateful for today, one thing we accomplished today, one thing we appreciated about the other person today, and one goal for tomorrow. Writing those reflections has been a way to ground myself in the now. To pause and focus on the present. During this pandemic, with the rest of my 2020 calendar full of question marks, these notes have helped remind me that today—not my future plans—are what define me and my time in this world. That even if we might mourn scrapped plans or opportunities, we can still show up and lean in and find something magical in the mundane every day.