What about that most American of mentalities which says we must keep doing things in a productive active showy way? I feel so relentlessly driven by my failure to do this. My failure? Really? Because I'm quite proud of and satisfied by the things I have managed to get done. But these things are past and therefore lacking the sweet tang of current pressing consequence. Peering into my chattering mind, it would seem that what truly matters is totting up a list of things to point at and say I am doing or am about to do.

Which, ouch, is the same mentality that has driven our homeschooling experience. Inside my deepest secret heart is a feeling we aren't haven't and don't do enough. My lists of what gets done, often blogged--in fact, of which the blogs exactly are, make no matter at all. The deep impulse is to constantly be driving forward into a list of Things Accomplished, a personal and American conflagration with driving constantly forward into the flow of now and here.

The ferocious reality is, beyond taking responsible care of our realistic physical needs, there are no things. There is only the expression of love and failure to love. Taking care of realistic physical needs with great love is the only success available. The signal flag of this kind of success is contentment, calm, and a gentle sort of pleasant mild happiness which has no need of lists nor pride nor gain.

We keep being here breathing, needing to eat, and creating decay all the days till we stop breathing. Its so easy to argue that this is easy to say, facile. What housewife, well fed, wouldn't decide there is nothing more important than cooking and cleaning with a deep and genuine love? But in the end, those words---almost all the chattering-mind words, don't matter. They don't change the nature of reality. We have only the responsibility to attend reality with love.

Really, I should scrub toilets with great love? Don't be silly. We only need to be simple and grateful and cheerful about all this decay and sorrow. Because that's what is here. All the rest: fanciness, wealth, accomplishment, any stuff, all that is just currency to spend on our ability to be kind, to enjoy ourselves, and to be loving in a responsible way.