Otherwise

Otherwise

by Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed

on two strong legs.

It might have been

otherwise. I ate

cereal, sweet

milk, ripe, flawless

peach. It might

have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill

to the birchwood.

All morning I did

the work I love.

At noon I lay down

with my mate. It might

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

at a table with silver

candlesticks. It might

have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed

in a room with paintings

on the walls, and

planned another day

just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

This poem makes me extremely jealous. Jane Kenyon has taken the distant future that I hope to achieve in my forties, and she is living it now. This is a future I have been writing quietly in the book of my head. I stick a bookmark into the spine and save it for later, not bothering to write it down on paper or share it.

This future being: living somewhere quiet, with trees and mountains. Making a living by writing-- really making a living of it, getting to wake up in the morning and devote those cleanest, brightest hours to writing. The kids are in late high school or maybe in college (so, maybe this is my fifties). I have a husband. We are companions and partners, still spontaneous enough to lie down at midday. The fruit is fresh and I am at peace.

Whether this happens to me or not, and whether this scenario would actually make me happy or not (where's working for social justice, or with other people?) is unimportant. The point of Otherwise is that, well, sometimes things are otherwise from what you want, and eventually, every good thing will be otherwise. Things may not get worse, but they'll surely change somehow.

“Otherwise” speaks of transience. Of everything-shall-return-to-dust. The way in which to enjoy it now is to meditate on the beauty of the plain detail of it. And to remind oneself, every so often, that it could always be otherwise.

When I feel really shitty and I've whined to my journal about it too much for even my current self-pitying mood, I challenge myself to write only about positive aspects of my current situations. A good conversation I had with my housemate over breakfast, a good book I'm reading, how it is finally warm (or cold) outside. I make a list of “otherwises.” It's not about the power of positive thinking, exactly, because in listing an otherwise, I am always quite aware of how it won't last. It more the power of, 'Hey! Pay attention!' These good things demand I pay attention to them before they're otherwise.