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The "Joy of Today"

A wonderful nun, Sr. Anna Mae Nadeau was a first grade teacher. Therefore she spent most of her work life devoted to the trials and tribulations of five and six year olds. She was a petite woman with a smiling face, and deep seated kindness that flowed from her eyes. After decades of teaching, she returned to her convent's motherhouse in her 70s in Monroe, Michigan. No longer an "official" teacher, Sr. Nadeau still would spend two days a week tutoring young kids with their reading and math, and the other three days of the workweek, she spent caring for the infirm elders in her motherhouse. She carried on in this fashion well into her late 80s. She died at the age of 93. Upon her death, it was discovered that she had kept a journal in which she revealed at the end of every day's passage, a joy that she had experienced that day.

Every day, she would list one joy that she experienced. Some days it was a small joy, others much larger. However... she did this every single day. It is a wonderful gift she shared in this fashion... the idea of being able to successfully find something of joy in the efforts of each day, even if much of the day itself was spent in hardship and toil.

While I am not anywhere near her level of atonement and grace, perhaps I can strive more to force myself to see, to hear, to feel that which can represent for me the joy I should feel, the joy I can experience. It seems daunting in many ways, but the results if I were to be successful would be profound. Perhaps, better yet, I can try to aim at not only finding a joy I have experienced each day, but perhaps to tie in with my devotion to service... perhaps I can figure out a way to give others joy in life as well?

I do not know if that is a possible goal. Sometimes, especially of late, I have felt a fraud, a fake, a horrible, ratty and hairy beast not worth the oxygen I consume. I have felt no seeming value in what I do, no seeming worth in who I am. It is as if I have become null... null and void in terms of my own humanity. I am an empty carcass, a hollow shell, a shucked pod. My innards have been vivisectioned from me, and hence with it my very soul is gone.

I cope with the void of my soul by busying myself with task upon task, effort upon effort, striving for atonement upon atonement. But for what? For what purpose? For what end?

I sit here and contemplate, and scratch my neck. I feel the harsh bristles of hair upon my neck and realize it has been two days since I have shaved my neck. I look into the mirror and see how the edges and corners of my beard have mellowed as the bristles along the border blend into my neckline. The whiskers that grow are akin to an ever ticking clock recording the passage of time. In these now 200 days since my mother's passing, I no longer have any of the hair that she knew me by on my head or face as it has been cut off at the barber. The hair that is in its place looks nearly the same, but yet it is not, it is wholly different. To see this and so many different things that were tangible remnants diffuse and dissipate is a harsh reminder of that passage of time, time that continues on past the last moments we were physically in each other's presence. The slow disintegration of my last remnants of contact with her physical hug of me, her last spoken words to me, her fragrance, her touch.

What is the meaning of it all? Is there any meaning? Are we meant to be torn from love that is so full and so real to live in a void? If we were to have meaning in any way, can it only be from those small acts of kindness that are so ephemeral and temporal? I do not know. I sometimes do not know what to think about anything anymore. I only do know that I wish I knew.

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