Little changes...

 April 15, 2026

Life ebbs and flows, doesn’t it? You hit a point in time when it seems as if every day there’s another something new to be handled. Appointments to attend, meetings to navigate, chores to be seen to or arranged to be seen to. The serenity of a steady schedule will elude you, so you might as well not even long for that scarce commodity “peace and quiet.”

Then before you know it, you hit a calm patch, sigh with relief, and trust it only after a few days have elapsed without any hair-on-fire moments.

There are ebbs and flows with the weather, as well. David and I have gone from: listening in almost-disbelief as our daughter described the older clients she sees. Folks who are either too chilled or too warm, depending entirely upon their physiology and on any given day; to understanding that little thing completely and believing it normal.

And it’s likely because her clients are mostly elderly, she doesn’t even bat an eye when she comes downstairs on a very nice day to find one or both of her parents under a blanket.

It can be a challenge to keep yourself steady these days, too. At least I have found it so. I have noticed lately that I don’t naturally cope well when things go off the rails as I used to. After identifying that new little foible, I’ve tried different methods to get myself back on an even keel.

I’ve found taking a few minutes to sit quietly and just let myself breathe helps. I take note of my feet on the floor, and my inhalations, and I wait until I’ve mentally chased away the seeds of panic that are seeking to sow themselves into my psyche. It mostly works.

Patience, that Holy Grail of human attributes, continues to grow, slowly, day by day. There was a time that I had very little of that precious substance. Lately I’ve figured out that of all the personal traits that can serve me the most, that one, patience, is pretty close to the top of the list.

We’re chugging along through the month of April at a steady pace. There are only a handful of television shows we watch in the evenings—David watches more as he loves to stream, but he does that on his own and on his computer. The ones we watch together in the evening are winding down, now. Two have already ended their seasons, and the rest will be there by mid May.

One of the programs I like the best—The Voice—changed it’s viewing time from 8 in the evening, to 9 for its two hour show. Egads! I can report that I am morphing into my mother, because it was a struggle staying awake for the entire program. Now, I do tape it via our cable company’s DVR feature. That is a precautionary measure. If something comes up and we can’t watch on any given night, I know we won’t miss it.

I could have chosen to seek an earlier bedtime, but that likely wouldn’t have worked. You see, after we’re done our TV viewing on any given night, we retreat to our respective computers….and our respective sly and alluring rabbit holes.

Day by day, the sun rises a little earlier and sets a little later as Planet Earth makes its way around the sun. We don’t notice the changes all that much right now: the sun rose here today at 6:32 am and will set again at 8:00 pm; tomorrow those times will be 6:30 am and 8:02 pm. Incrementally more “daylight” that we only tend to notice after we’re further along into the spring, and in summer and the comparisons to early spring are no longer incremental.

If you’re wanting just “ten more minutes” of sunlight, simply wait a few days.

David and I both enjoyed the blast from the past—the Artemis II mission. We watched the blast-off, and the splash down, as well as taking in whatever news items were broadcast—including a clip showing the astronauts’ conversation with our Prime Minister, Mark Carney.

It was a nice distraction just when we needed one and reminded us of something fundamental. Not much, especially when it comes to humans and human nature, is ever truly brand new.

We have been here before. We likely will be again. It’s up to the most astute among us to take notes.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

  

 

Differences...

 April 8, 2026

I like to think that making assumptions about things is a practice mostly owned by the young. Or a habit born out of laziness, when the reason is not sufficiently, nor successfully developed or utilized. Unless one is still wet behind the ears, or supremely narcissistic, making any kind of judgement on first look is something we tend to outgrow over time, as we get more of life’s kaka on us.

How much time depends on the degree of perceptiveness one possesses.

We learn these lessons almost unawares and sometimes don’t realize we are learning them. But we do learn them. For an easy example, as I write this essay this morning, I can see out the window (around my ginormous monitor) that there’s a pretty blue sky, sunlight bathing the view, and grass seeming to turn greener as I watch. A younger me would think the day was warm outside. The current me knows better and always checks the present temperature before going forth out of doors.

If you’re wondering, it is currently just above freezing outside (36 F, 2C), but it “feels like” freezing (28 F, -2C).

We don’t often stop to think about how many decisions/judgements we make in the course of a normal day. It’s a lot. Whether to get up in the morning, and if so, when? How many pieces of toilet paper to use. Do I wash my hands after or not. If I do for how long? Do I dry my hands on the towel hanging on the rack, or do I grab a piece of paper towel? What am I going to wear? This is actually several decisions: bra or no bra and which one; which panties; long pants or skirt or do I opt for a dress; tee-shirt or blouse or pullover sweater. Socks, or no socks, and which ones. Slippers or shoes, or, God help me boots, and yes, which ones.

That’s fifteen (ish) decisions before you’ve even had your first cup of coffee!

Most of the choices/decisions we make are done by rote. At some point we’ve settled our preferences for how we like to do things, and those choices are practically automatic. And for the most part, these are choices that could be considered of less importance or consequence, big-picture-wise.

Sometimes we’ll stop and consider, and make a different choice, just for a change, but not often.

I think if we could take a time out and study the kinds of choices and decisions and judgements we make through a regular day, we would likely learn a lot about ourselves, who we are, what kind of people we are.

Not everyone has a tendency toward self-awareness. We don’t all live intentionally. We’re simply not all the same and that’s all right because we were not designed to be the same.

We are made of the same basic star-stuff; there are variations of design used in our assemblage, so we have differences among us, and that was all part of the Master’s plan.

Some of the things that we, as human beings come to loggerheads over are crucial and important matters, the outcomes of which can have far reaching consequences to the lives and welfare of many.

And some simply never rise to that level.

The first trick in life is learning how to discern between the differences that matter, and the ones that don’t. And because we’re all not the same, those lists we each make will not share all of the same qualities.

The more important trick in life is the ability to come to a consensus of what qualities are essential—and which ones really are just a matter of personal taste.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

Foolishness?

 April 1, 20226

Well, we’ve made it through March successfully, and here we are on April’s launch day.

Now, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. But it seems to me that it’s been a long time since we, as a society, acknowledged the existence of “April Fool’s Day”. I’m not sure what the reason could be for that. But this morning I found it slightly diverting to venture forth some theories on the subject.

Perhaps we are now a culture far too sophisticated to take a morning to harmlessly prank and tease our neighbors, friends, and in some cases, those considered to be the thorns in our sides.

And hey, not even a full day was designated for the observances in the first place, at least not in my lived experience. What was with that? Every other noted day was the day of note for the whole day. But April Fool’s? It was a very real thing that noon hour was the point at which all pranking and tomfoolery was to cease and desist—or else!

But I digress.

Maybe we simply short circuited our propensity for foolishness. My possibly faulty recollection puts the point at which celebrating the day waned to have been in direct conjunction with the frenzy of anticipation of the historic date of January 1, 2000.

Folks indulged in such foolishness, creating a months-long, daily increasing fear of the approach of the new millennia that  the term “Y2K bug” was coined, and believed real. Do you recall the speculation wreaking event-horizon level havoc across our newly established technological age? Hell, after that display of human “sophistication”, there was no foolishness left within us thereafter to dedicate to even one morning a year.

But that can’t be it, because human foolishness is a never-ending story, truly knowing no bounds. We couldn’t simply have just used it all up.

There is one other way of thinking about things I came up with, and I wanted to share this one last. As is always helpful, we should briefly consider something else, the acknowledgement of which also (and maybe not so unconnected) has fallen out of fashion: considering the history of the situation. Looking at the history of any situation is always a worthwhile endeavor. Hence the saying: if you don’t study the past how can you step into the future?

Why was it that April Fool’s Day became popular thing in the first place? Its existence stretches far back, not just several decades or centuries, but, some claim, millennia.

How far back? Why, we’re talking as far back as the adoption of the Gregorian calendar (1582), or before that, with Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1380s). There are even those who believe that the day goes all the way back to Ancient Rome and the Festival of Hilaria—yes, even before the birth of Christ!

If that last theory of the origin of April Fool’s Day is true, well, what on earth could have happened so quickly (in the historical sense), so unexpectedly, to have knocked all need for a single morning dedicated to human beings expressing their inner foolishness, their complete inanity? Why, for a cherished tradition to just slide right off the human consciousness like that, there must have been something so traumatic, so damaging, so unnatural….

Here the author pauses, shakes her head and takes a moment to look around her. She scans the news, the daily horoscopes, and even the annals of various social media platforms. Her eyes widen in a sudden epiphanous moment. Her face undergoes a transformation of expression sliding right from avid curiosity to abject chagrin.

Never mind. I completely understand. There’s more than enough foolishness surrounding us at this moment in time that we will likely, henceforth, file the observance of April Fool’s Day under the heading of “quaint”. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury