"Paris to the Moon"

Sue, my friend from Lisle, Illinois, recommended that I read "Paris to the Moon" by Adam Gopnik, in anticipation of our trip to Paris. I ordered it from the library, and it just arrived today. I paged through it a little, enjoying the hot sun of mid-day in the library garden. The preface mentioned "the grand tradition of the American abroad". It is a memoir of his years spent living in Paris, starting in the fall of 1995. He wrote a column for many years in The New Yorker called "Paris Journals". I got wistful, almost regretful, reflecting that living abroad is something I always wanted to do, but never did. The last few days I find myself wondering about how I have lived my life, if I've done what I've wanted to, if I have "accomplished" anything.

This probably follows a recent conversation with my sister. She is achieving enormous professional success in these last few months. She is publishing her first book (she has authored previous books but this will be her first on her own) and just got offered a really lucrative contract. I am so proud of her. She has worked so hard forever and is now seeing it all come to fruition. But it also made me question what I am doing, how I spend my time, what is important. My health continues to hold up, yet I still have these nagging questions -- for how long? what if I get bad news? will I wish that I'd made different choices now?

At work today our new medical director asked me to see some of his really complex cases, victims of sex trafficing and child soldiers and the like. A different population. We were discussing how I am using my time at work. So I'm filled with questions these last few days. Am I using my energy and time wisely?

Every day I end meditation and yoga practice with gratitude, then prayers for people with cancer and other health problems, as well as asking for guidance about how to live now. How to live as fully as possible.

A Mary Oliver poem comes to mind:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?