Life is a Verb

I cannot remember how I stumbled on Patti Digh’s blog, 37 days, but can we really remember when or how we stumble on something important? We would like to think how we discovered the love of our lives, or how we really felt holding our first child, and how it feels to let go of the hands of the ones we love when they need it…but the truth is, that sort of remembering is like fabricating a fairy tale about our own lives. Many of us decide at a young age to construct a to-do-list for the next 70 years that goes something like this: college, job, marriage, kids, retirement, grand kids, security…
At any given part of this larger to-do-list, we have constructed smaller ones, lists that may look like this: pack lunches, grocery store, gym, work, call insurance agent, TIVO Survivor, feed cats.

I have never been much a of a list maker. In fact, list makers scare me, and I have never been sure why until I read the first pages of Patti’s book, Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. She writes clearly about the importance of Marginalia, and not being afraid to inhabit the margins, for this is where you will truly find life—not in the lists and the plans and the prose of our day-to-day. Life is a Verb is clearly a very well planned piece of art, with beautiful quotes and photos right where they should be, and large, large margins. Patti hopes that her readers will hold a pen as they read and use those margins to make her quest for an intentional life their own. She writes:

“Marginalia is a way of carrying on a larger, broader conversation…I hope you will find yourself in the margins, between and beneath the words and perhaps if I have done my job, in them.”

In your mind, take a moment and scan your life so far. Are the moments that you remember in the plans that you made, in the to-do lists? No, they are in the margins. The chance meetings, the acceptance letters you never thought you would receive, the rejections you never thought you would feel, the goodbyes…

Patti encourages us to not be afraid of these margins, but underneath her words resides a truth…we have no choice. Our lives are already in the margins, inhaling and exhaling the unexpected. If we frame this truth correctly, we can see that this truth is a gift. In the short week that I have had the opportunity to hold Life is a Verb in my hands, I have learned how to frame my truths and see with new eyes. Again, I have no idea how I stumbled on Patti Digh, on 37 days, and Life is a Verb. I guess one day I gave it all over to Marginalia, and Marginalia gave back.