The World Is Mine on an Any Kind of Day

I’ve heard retired persons say that when they wake up, they wonder what day it is. They’ve lost the Monday through Friday routine when it makes a great deal of difference whether the coffee maker is plugged in and the trash sits on the curb. Each day of the seven-day week is significant and as insignificant as the day before. Frederick Buechner in The Alphabet of Grace writes, “It is an insignificant, humdrum kind of day with no particular agenda, nothing special to do or think or be in it. It is an any-day kind of day with little to distinguish it from either yesterday or tomorrow. You wake up, which is to say you pick up the threads again of your life. For one more day the world is yours. You are your own to name” (page 33).            
Today as we pick up the threads of our lives, how will we weave them? It is very seldom that I have no “have to” event in my day. When those rare days occur, I feel disjointed, tendons not holding me together. Without urgency or requirement, I should be happy to have choices. Shall I read, exercise, clean, organize, work ahead? No matter what I choose, it feels as if I’ve picked up the wrong threads. Buechner may have the answer: “It is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be alive if you can all through this day today of your life.  What’s to be done?  What’s to be done?  Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. . . . Live in the needs of the day” (page 40).