by Sara Flitner

You know that friend who, when asked how things are going, always answers, “If I were any better, there’d be two of me?”    

I am sure you are a good person, but say your dog just threw up in the unfortunate path of your bare foot. Or maybe you just learned you must replace the freezer, which is expensive, and also means weeks and weeks without ice cream. So, it would be understandable if the first idea that popped into your head was to get a giant roll of duct tape and figure out how to shut the two of them up. 

by Sara Flitner

“Let me wear the day
Well so when it reaches you
You will enjoy it.”

- Sonia Sanchez

This is haiku, a style of poetry that reaches into the present moment, the natural world, the heart of the matter. I love its brevity, its force, its directness. I love that I can submerge into it without drama or a big commitment. I can wear it.

Agnes Bourne, a writer, poet, designer, creative, and spreader of joy, will lead our July “Everyday Mindfulness” program at Teton County Library (9 AM on July 9). She will teach us how to use haiku as a mindfulness practice, a creative way to develop attention in the moment, and to really have some fun together.

It’s a perfect time to introduce a few weeks of Daily Acts that are inspired by haiku, by the power of short, intentional phrases to lean on through our busy summer days. At Becoming Jackson Whole, our team is always curious about ways we can pivot, or refocus, or share something we’ve been helped by, in an effort to bring more ease and balance into your busy, unique lives.

“Catastrophic road failure” said the newspaper article, as if the road itself had let us down. Overnight appeared a crack in the facade, sprouting Medusa-like tendrils out and across the highway, more just beneath the surface. The highway proctors noticed right away and began a pantomime as old as the unstable dirt. A patch, a hopeful work-around, a brave finger in the dike against the mighty force of nature. For a few hours, it held, and people from the towns on either side of the crack sighed relief and went home to dinner, family, sleep.  

Overnight, the crack deepened and widened, its appetite for progress growing until it split and fractured and sent off new fissures, a long run-on sentence diagrammed by nature, sending messages and meaning. “Pay attention,” it said to canyons and cars in all directions. “It’s time you listen.” 

When I saw the front bumper dangling low to the ground, threatening to detach entirely, I braced myself for the story and wondered how my friends had managed to make it over Teton Pass with the wounded metal hanging by a bolt. Mike eased the truck to a stop and didn’t utter a word as Maureen flung open the passenger door. 

“He just about backed over me in the garage,” she began. “I screamed bloody murder and dove for the floor, but with the engine running, he didn’t hear a thing.” 

By now, Mike had slumped nearly to the floormats behind the steering wheel. This trip was nonnegotiable, I knew—they both wanted to be here for the milestone we would share – but it seemed unlikely that the bumper – or Mike – would make the return trip without collateral damage.  

“I’m so glad you’re both OK,” I said. “But what happened to the front of the car, if he was backing up?” 

Maureen’s eyes narrowed. 

“Is it really a problem that we have so little control? Is it a problem that plans altogether are written in water?” Pema Chodron

I have taken leave to the desert, a good place to probe opposition. As good as any, I realize, to think about water when I’m walking in an ecosystem thriving without much of it. Part of what pulls me in is that it constantly surprises me. I expect scarcity, but am rewarded with three, four, five different birdsongs, a coyote, a handful of jackrabbits, deer,  horned toad, two hawks in flight above. Every living thing I see reminds me I fit into something I can only take in in fragments. Crystalline blue sky, lemon yellow poppies, saguaro cactus open-armed but armed with a clear message: don’t get too close.

We belong, but to what? We’re here, but why? Is the point really to find answers?

I have a wise friend who said the damndest thing recently. “You ought to try to just trust life,” she said. “What if you just assume that everything is working out ok?”

First, I secretly checked her pupils to see if they were dilated. …

I have always counted things: books I’ve read, antelope on the horizon, calories, miles to go, ideas, vertical feet. In early adulthood, I counted credentials, promotions, vegetables, the “Big Five” for my kids to bring to elementary school, homework assignments. As I got older, I counted billable hours, votes, days on the mountain. 

I counted things as if I were casting spells, a sorceress conjuring safety and security for myself and my loved ones. The lists and spells and additions in my head meant a constant whir of noise that actually distracted me from the clarity that underpins satisfaction. 

My son pulls out of the driveway, flashing two fingers and a grin as he heads back to school for his final semester. The sun’s blinding brilliance does nothing to move the temperature, which stays at a stubborn minus 11. I grow increasingly restless as my mind jumps from the weather and road conditions to the list of things I need to get done—the list of things I can use to distract myself from this terrible knowing that each time my sons leave, my heart divides itself and lives uneasy. Fractured into pride and panic. Motherhood, for all its stretching and expanding, is also a lifetime sentence of farewells. I wasn’t prepared for this part; since the arrival of my oldest more than two decades ago, I am no longer autonomous. I live with the truths and possibilities of them in bones, blood, heartbeat.

Welcome, 2024! 

Many years ago, as a child and a Catholic, I would give myself the hardest challenges during Lent. I would labor over the most difficult things I could give up (the year without candy, popcorn, or ice cream sticks out as particularly grim) to avoid purgatory or worse. I am no longer a child or Catholic, though I am a fan of both, and my ideas around service, resolutions, and meaningful sacrifice have matured with my hair color. (What? You thought it was still this brown?) 

As I turn the page on 2023, I invite you to join me in lightening up, already. I don’t make resolutions anymore, but I do like being intentional about what might really help me be a better human and a stronger part of our community so that I can be of use when it’s my turn.

I admit it. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. I did a few healthy things, like drinking decaf and reminding my lab Hector that dogs are indeed superior. I did my mindfulness practice and refrained from turning on the news.

My disposition soured further, however, when I discovered that my inbox seemed overtaken by the gratitude police, prodding me into everything from a gratitude journal to starting a gratitude text string, or writing a heartfelt letter to the three people who have most influenced my life, “with specific detail” about why I was thankful. 

The icing on the cake was falling hostage to a chatty colleague in the coffee line (let’s face it, decaf is no match for days like this) who insisted on reciting a litany of things he felt “blessed” by, a phrase that somehow sets off warning bells that I’m about to get told about a bunch of things that the teller has that I don’t.  

Naturally, I wanted to vomit. Double espresso, please.  …