Happy Monday, my friends!
(Yeah, I know, it’s weird, I said “Happy” Monday…it’s not necessarily an oxymoron…hear me out!)
I was always the kid who enjoyed the first day of school. How about you? The first day of vacation was pretty great, too!
There is great power in “firsts.” We are almost supernaturally (or superstitiously!) drawn to the gravitas of beginnings.
I remember very clearly making a circle of hands around my mother when she began her first treatment: my dad, some close friends, the nurses at the infusion center. Some of us prayed, some of us stood silent, some of us spoke whispered encouragement. I’ve heard similar memories from many patients and caregivers. No matter the words on our lips or in our minds, the sentiment is the same: there is great awe when we begin an experience, a journey, a season.
I’ve always thought that part of the particular joy unique to a beginning is the ability to cast off any detritus from the previous experience, journey, or season. If there is baggage or fear or angst (or anything else unpleasant) that is keeping us from advancing into the new moment, the changing chapter gives us permission to leave behind whatever we do not need—whatever will not service us as we move forward.
In that way, a beginning is also a chance to reset.
A couple of careers ago, I was a professional actor. I still do the occasional play, when the schedule is calm, and I recently closed a show with my small community theatre group.
During rehearsals, when there is a problem in a scene, or a snag in a set change, there is always one perfect solution: we reset. “Reset” is shoptalk for going back to zero: we literally re-set the scene (actors AND scenery), start the scene over, fix the issue, and then move on with renewed confidence. Like a bone that breaks and heals stronger at the point of fracture, a scene that has been reset usually turns out much better and smoother than it was before.
So, I’ve been thinking lately about the significance of beginnings and resets. That brings me back to Mondays…
Mondays are the calendar’s “firsts.” For many of us, it’s the first workday after a (too-short) break. For others, it’s the first schoolday of the week. For most of us, it’s the first day we can expect business-hours productivity after the hectic rush that is (usually) Friday afternoon.
And, for all of us, it’s the loop-point of the week. It’s the marker of how we count weeks backward or forward, between commitments and appointments.
So, it’s a built-in reset. It’s a page-turner. It’s a blank slate. It’s a chance to start over: whatever didn’t get finished on Friday didn’t destroy us, and whatever has to get finished this week hasn’t yet come due.
For those reasons, I love Mondays. They’ve become my mini-reset. From Sunday night into Monday morning (I’m an incurable night owl; I’m too old now to deny it!), I find poignant peace in the tiny resets I can enact around the house. I help Monday arrive with its blank slate by creating all the blank slates I can think of: leveling off the laundry pile, clearing the kitchen counter, emptying the sink, running the dishwasher, taking out the trash, refilling toilet paper rolls, cleaning cat boxes, loading drink cans into the fridge…
You get the picture.
I cannot emphasize enough how precious that time has become to me in the years I’ve been helping my parents. I now look forward to Sunday evening, which, in itself, is life-changing. Instead of fearing Monday morning’s potential onslaught of “stuff” to deal with, I try and push last week’s dirt into the bin (or under the rug, ha!) and set the stage for the week on my own terms.
I don’t know why waking up to a sink full of Friday’s dishes on Monday morning is so soul-crushing (knowing the "why" is above my pay-grade), but it IS. It just is. At some point along the way, I learned this: I learned that the sink full of dishes represented everything that did not get “checked off” last week, and that it now stood between me and everything I needed to accomplish THIS week.
This was one of the most satisfying epiphanies I ever had, my friends, because the problem was so easy to fix.
We can’t change our circumstances, and that alone is the source of most of our stress as caregivers. There is so much about our current situations that we would change if we had the chance, but since we can’t, we need to channel that desire for control into the mountains we CAN climb.
And that laundry pile over there is just the right mountain.
