Light Tomorrow with Today.

“Light Tomorrow with Today.”

Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861)

This past Friday the world slipped quietly into spring. In Denver the spring equinox occurred in the pre-dawn darkness. Nevertheless, the light arrived exactly when it was supposed to.

One's skin can actually feel the light source shifting northward. As it does, the edge of afternoon sunlight is creeping closer to the north-facing French door by which I work my daily words. I like the light. Come July I'll wish there was a shade on the door!

I don't know about you, but I spend too much of my time focused on tomorrow. My mind messages go something like this: “Tomorrow when I've finished the job application I'll call my friend....” “Next week I'll go to coffee when I've earned the break...” “Next year when I've finished the book and found a publisher, I'll do more volunteer work....”

I've decided that I've got the light thing backwards. It was Elizabeth Barret Browning who reminded us of the right order. Each of us has got to use today, live in today, and use the good that we do today to guide our way to the next day. And if that good is merely to do a good day's work, to be civil to our fellow human beings, or to go out of our way to be kind to just one person who could use some light in their life right now? Well then – we don't have to worry that we're not negotiating world peace!

Next week, if I master the technical setup to be able to do a mobile blog using my lap top, I'll be blogging from Paris. I might even Twitter! I find it the ultimate in irony. That I may be able to write my muse about the light an individual can make in this world, from the city...THE CITY... that personifies light? Well, grace has indeed shown upon me.

I'm prepared. I've already packed my writing journal, my high heels and what chic, black clothes I own. I'm debating how best to carry my laptop. And I ordered A Writer's Paris from Writers Digest Books. It's called “a guided journey for the creative soul.” I don't think you have to be a writer to read it, but it helps.

Precious family time will occur on this trip; a graduation gift to our son and daughter, who graduate this year from college and high school. But I will write as well. For as I know the book will tell me, I need to write in cafes and in perfect little parks, on the grass at the Eiffel Tower, under the flying buttresses of Notre Dame and from a river boat on the Seine. If I can do that, then....I have truly used the experience of today's light to light tomorrow; perhaps for more people than myself. Write and light do rhythm after all.