Find your glimmer

It’s sitting in the dappled sunlight in a cafe in a tiny European town drinking cappuccino and dreaming about words under sprays of purple flowers and ceilings of crown molding.

It’s a tiny dog nestled into me, willing me to not move, allowing me to be the big spoon for a change, moving her tiny legs in her sleep, her breathing increasing making me smile at the thought of her chasing rabbits through a sunlit meadow.

It’s my animated Snoopy watch face on my Apple Watch, watching him rest on his doghouse and swinging from the clock arms with Woodstock in tow.

It’s my wife laughing at a Tik Tok about having a wife who can’t find her way out of a wet paper bag that I sent her from across the room.

It’s a really, really good cup of coffee, especially one I made myself.

It’s twinning with my best friend in Italy, walking down the cobblestone streets eating gelato.

It’s seeing La Sagrada Familia in person.

It’s making a recipe that turns out to be insanely delicious.

It’s people’s faces when I bake for them.

It’s swinging on the swing set with my friend’s kids.

It’s hearing that song.

It’s watching that movie.

It’s a glimmer.

I don’t know where I first heard it. But I loved it immediately: Instead of the triggers, look for the glimmers.

I knew just what it meant the second I read it. And I was enthralled with the idea.

I do my very best to be a positive girl. But I can get knocked over all too easily — especially these days with so much horror and tragedy all around the world. It is imperative to stay informed. It’s impossible to not feel the pain. And it is life-saving to still recognize the glimmers that are all around us despite it all.

Perhaps it’s even more important to give glimmers their due when so much sadness and tragedy abounds. We are not promised tomorrow, as the saying goes. And just like our feelings of sadness and despair deserve to be recognized, so too do our feelings of joy. For without joy, what do we have?

And if we cannot find joy in slices of sunlight or strokes of paint or breaths of laughter we are truly lost.

I couldn’t help but smile as I gathered these glimmers. They give me both peace in the present and hope for the future. They also make me wonder what would happen if we focused our vision on seeking those out. Could they ease the things that trigger us? Remind us that this too shall pass?

Allow us to thank the trigger for the opportunity to accept and reflect and then set it free when it no longer serves us?

Could we instead hold fast to the glimmers and allow them to offer us some release? Some relief? Some respite? Kittens and rainbows won’s stop a war, I know. But they can certainly give us at least a fighting chance to carry on. No one who has survived the unthinkable has allowed themselves to be swallowed by grief.

They can’t. We can’t.

Some days I am at a loss. And then it happens: A glimmer. My puppy looks up into the sky as she rides for the very first time in the convertible that my wife’s grandfather designed. My daughter takes a bite of her favorite dumplings. My wife docks the boat with ease on the first try despite the windy day.

I am offering you a challenge — some days it may seem like a bigger challenge than others, but I offer it just the same. Find the glimmers and see if, just maybe, they can help you find your way out.

They can be so, so simple: Cooler weather after months of oppressive heat — even on a Monday; your favorite snack on a flight — even after a pile of delays; an afternoon nap — even when the morning was a mess.

Life offers us all kinds of opportunities to choose which way we will go, towards the darkness or towards the light. Sometimes the pull will feel too strong. The darkness may feel too inevitable. And yet, we get to choose where our minds will go, where we will look, on what we will focus.
When the world is dark, I look for the glimmers. When the day is hard, I seek out the glimmers. When fear creeps in, I aim for the glimmers. I can’t always do it. It’s not always easy. But when I do, the reward is great.

Best of all, the more I look, the more I find. And now, it seems, the glimmers find me. Where will you find a glimmer today?