The sun was rising, its rays reaching through the window. A cool morning breeze moved through the room. Familiar voices sounded in the background. I was enjoying it when I thought, This shouldn’t be happening here. This belongs in Hawaii.
I was in Scottsdale. Nothing about the morning required me to be somewhere else. Yet the feeling seemed to have arrived at the wrong address.
I remembered being in Hawaii with friends. Being with them, enjoying myself, with nothing more asked of me than a smile. There was something familiar about this morning, and Hawaii was how I recognized it.
But my words had already begun moving me somewhere. This belongs in Hawaii could easily become I want to go to Hawaii. Then I would have a destination, something to arrange, a place where I might find the feeling I was having.
By the next morning, I could see the sequence more clearly.
Where was I in the experience? Before it, wanting it? In it, enjoying it? Or looking back, remembering something I had enjoyed?
The difference was small enough to disappear in conversation. “I want to have a morning like that” and “I am having a morning like that” might refer to the same imagined scene. But they placed me somewhere different in relation to my own life.
One left me waiting.
I began to question Hawaii too.
Had I actually felt this there? I had been to Cancún more often. Perhaps some of what I was remembering belonged there. And the Hawaii I pictured was certainly drawn from another time. Going there today would mean encountering a place that had continued without me.
I didn’t need to settle the geography to notice what the image was expressing.
I was happy. Here, in this house, with that light still in the room.
That was the part I could locate.
Then came the impulse to prolong it. If a place had given me this feeling, perhaps returning would give me more of it. I know how to make travel plans. It is familiar work, and work I enjoy.
This time, though, I noticed another possibility. I could stay with the morning. Slow down enough to feel what I had already recognized. There was still something here to enjoy while I was thinking about where to go.
Later, I thought about how carefully I sometimes speak of what I have.
“I want a beautiful house” feels less exposing than “I have a beautiful house.”
A wish leaves room for sympathy, encouragement, shared longing. Acknowledging possession risks another response. Someone might hear boasting. Someone might feel envy. When I anticipate those reactions, I can soften what I say until I sound as though I am still hoping for a life I already inhabit.
Perhaps that language has become so familiar that I use it even when I am alone.
There is no one listening who needs me to be discreet. Still, I speak to myself from the position of wanting. My choices and my work recede from view. I become less visible as someone who has helped arrange the conditions of his own life.
I am beginning to hear that happen.
Yesterday, I was enjoying the morning. Hawaii came to mind. I interpreted the resemblance as a mismatch, as though the feeling belonged elsewhere.
Today, I can see how my language kept me a step behind myself. I was speaking of where I wanted to be while already feeling something I wanted to feel.
“I am” and “I have” let me acknowledge that.
The morning had happened here. I had enjoyed it. And I could hear myself say so without immediately making another plan.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
