I spent the last few days with my mom and during one of our conversations my mom said, “I’m going to be 89 next April and that’s really old.” “Then ninety.” I replied. She responded, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but I’m not tapping out.”
I offered, “I’m nowhere near that and sometimes I feel really old.” I paused for a minute before pondering out loud, “How did we get this way?”
Her response contained all the simplicity of true wisdom, “One day at a time.”
We become ourselves in small increments. In the moment they can seem like a series of seemingly inconsequential decisions. Yet piled upon one another, all these small decisions determine how life evolves.
We become who we are, not all at once, but one day at a time. And I would argue, even one moment at a time.
Kindness or meanness. Curiosity or arrogance. Generosity or scarcity. Inclusion or exclusion. Seeing or turning a blind eye. Deep breaths or reactivity. Investment or indifference. This road or that one. Choice by choice we choose who we become.
How did we get this way? It is a common queary these days. People are shocked at the seemingly overnight fall into fascism, the shocking indifference they find among friends whom they have known for years and the naked racism they see in a party or faith tradition to which they have been lifelong devotees.
To quote my mother, “We got here one day at a time.”
Like the old adage of a frog in a kettle, incremental changes don’t raise the alarm bells in the same way an open flame might. In fact, in the beginning, building a wall and identity politics often offer the same pleasant feeling a frog gets from the safety of the high sides of the kettle and the soothing embrace of the warm water. It’s one of the reasons we can get so far down an awful road before we realize it’s a dead end for humanity.
Good news is, we can change course at any time. And while things won’t get better overnight, one day at a time we can make a better world. Brick by brick we can tear down the walls they have erected. Once choice at a time, step by step, repentance by reparation, protest by long term commitments, kindness by sacrifice, together we can bring down the temperature on racism, patriarchy, bigotry and greed.
And it’s possible we can help some people see that even a cool water kettle isn’t the way to go. We are not safe in any system that can turn up the heat anytime they want. Fact is, humanity isn’t safe under any authority that would see turning up the heat as a reasonable way to go. One day at a time maybe we can break the whole of the world free from every abusive system.
And then one day perhaps we will turn to one another and say, “How did we get to a world that is good news of great joy for all people?” And our elders will say, “We got here one day at a time.”
Let’s not tap out.
