At 7:03 on Monday morning, Lily decided she was going to become a calm person. Not eventually. Not after therapy, personal growth, or several years living alone in a cabin where nobody could find her. Today.
She had watched a video the night before featuring a suspiciously peaceful woman wearing beige linen who explained that happiness began with intention. Lily had intentions. Mostly involving coffee, but they were intentions nonetheless.
She got out of bed, stretched dramatically toward the ceiling, and whispered, “Today, I choose peace.”
Her cat, Kevin, immediately vomited on the rug.
Lily stared at him. Kevin stared back. “Okay,” she said. “Peace begins at 7:10.”
She cleaned the rug, made coffee, and opened the curtains to welcome the morning sunlight. It was raining. Sideways. Her garbage can was lying in the middle of the street.
“Wonderful,” Lily whispered. “Nature is cleansing.”
She wasn’t sure what it was cleansing, but apparently it had decided to start with her garbage. Still, Lily refused to be defeated. Calm people did not get upset about overturned garbage cans. Calm people embraced inconvenience.
She put on rubber boots, marched outside in her pajamas, retrieved the garbage can, and discovered that one of her neighbours had accidentally driven over the lid. It was now shaped like a taco.
“Good morning!” the neighbour called cheerfully.
Lily held up the mangled lid. “Morning!”
“Sorry about that!”
“No problem!”
It was absolutely a problem. But Lily was choosing peace.
Back inside, she lit a candle. The peaceful beige woman had specifically recommended candles. “Create an environment that supports your nervous system,” she’d said.
Excellent. Lily’s nervous system required vanilla.
She placed the candle on the kitchen counter, took a deep breath, and opened her laptop. There were 37 emails. Four were marked urgent. One had the subject line JUST CIRCLING BACK.
Lily immediately disliked whoever had invented circles.
She took a sip of coffee. “I am calm.”
Kevin jumped onto the counter.
“I am centred.”
Kevin approached the candle.
“I am emotionally regulated.”
Kevin’s tail passed directly through the flame.
Kevin launched himself approximately six feet into the air. Lily screamed. Kevin screamed. The coffee screamed metaphorically as Lily knocked it across the counter.
For the next thirty seconds, Lily chased a mildly singed cat through the house while yelling, “YOUR ASS IS ON FIRE!”
Technically, his ass wasn’t actually on fire, but this wasn’t the time for precision.
Eventually Kevin hid beneath the sofa, offended but unharmed. Lily stood in the middle of the living room holding a wet dish towel. It was 7:42.
She extinguished the candle.
“We’re done with ambience.”
Peace would have to continue without vanilla.
By nine o’clock, Lily had decided she needed groceries. Calm people, she reasoned, probably ate vegetables. She wasn’t entirely sure because the peaceful woman from the video seemed to survive exclusively on herbal tea and things sprinkled with chia seeds.
Lily drove to the grocery store. The parking lot was full. She circled twice before spotting someone loading groceries into their car.
Perfect.
Lily stopped and waited. The woman loaded six bags, returned her cart, got into the car, adjusted her mirrors, checked her phone, put on sunglasses, removed the sunglasses, put them back on, and apparently wrote her memoir.
Lily smiled through clenched teeth. “I choose patience.”
Finally, the car backed out. Before Lily could pull in, a silver SUV swooped around the corner and stole the space.
Lily stared at it.
The driver waved.
Not apologetically. Cheerfully.
Something ancient awakened inside Lily.
For one beautiful moment, she considered abandoning her commitment to peace and becoming a criminal. Instead, she smiled.
It was not a healthy smile. It was the smile of a woman who had recently chased a smoking cat through her living room.
“That’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
Lily found another parking space approximately seventeen kilometres from the store. Inside, she grabbed a cart with one wheel that immediately began screaming.
“SQUEAK. SQUEAK. SQUEAK.”
She pushed it three feet.
“SQUEAK. SQUEAK. SQUEAK.”
“No.”
She exchanged it.
The second cart pulled aggressively to the left.
“Fine. You have dreams. Let’s go.”
Lily began shopping. Spinach. Bananas. Yogurt. Avocados. She felt healthier simply looking at them.
Then she reached the coffee aisle.
A man was standing directly in front of the coffee she wanted. He wasn’t shopping. He was having a telephone conversation.
“Yes, Brian,” he said loudly. “But that’s what I told Cheryl.”
Lily waited.
Apparently Cheryl had made some questionable decisions.
Lily waited longer.
Brian had opinions.
Lily learned considerably more about Cheryl’s marriage than Cheryl would probably have appreciated.
Eventually Lily reached around him.
“Oh, sorry,” the man said.
“No worries.”
There were worries. There were several.
At the checkout, Lily chose the shortest line.
This was her first mistake.
The woman ahead of her had coupons. So many coupons. Lily had never seen that many coupons outside an extreme-couponing television program.
The cashier scanned one.
Beep.
Coupon.
Beep.
Coupon.
Then came the dreaded words.
“This one’s expired.”
The woman gasped.
Lily closed her eyes.
Peace. Peace. PEACE.
“I used one yesterday!”
Lily opened one eye.
The cashier called a supervisor.
Lily aged four years.
Eventually, she escaped.
By noon, she was back home and emotionally somewhere around Thursday. She put away the groceries and decided to meditate.
Ten minutes. That was all.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, closed her eyes, and started the meditation app. A gentle voice spoke.
“Allow your thoughts to drift away. Imagine each thought as a cloud passing through the sky.”
Beautiful.
A cloud appeared.
Did I put the yogurt away?
Another cloud.
I should clean the bathroom.
Another.
Why do we call them apartments when they’re all stuck together?
Lily frowned.
“Return your attention to your breath.”
She inhaled.
Kevin began licking himself loudly beside her.
“Notice the sounds around you without judgment.”
SLURP. SLURP. SLURP.
Lily’s eye twitched.
“Allow them to exist.”
SLURP.
“Kevin.”
SLURP.
“Kevin.”
Kevin stopped and stared at her.
Lily closed her eyes again. “Thank you.”
Kevin walked directly into her lap and sat down.
Apparently meditation now involved a twelve-pound cat pressing his anus against her knee.
Lily lasted another eleven seconds.
“Okay. Enlightenment is cancelled.”
She made a sandwich instead.
By late afternoon, Lily had stopped actively pursuing calmness and was simply trying not to yell at household appliances. Oddly enough, that’s when something happened.
She was standing in the kitchen when she noticed the rain had stopped. Sunlight was coming through the window. Kevin was asleep on the sofa, his dignity fully restored. Her groceries were put away. Her emails had been answered. Nobody had died. Even the garbage-can lid, while permanently taco-shaped, still technically functioned.
Lily made another coffee and sat on the porch.
She thought about her day. Had she become the serene woman from the video? Absolutely not. Lily would never voluntarily own that much beige.
Had she floated peacefully through every inconvenience? Also no. She had briefly considered committing a felony over a parking space.
But she’d handled everything.
The cat. The garbage. The emails. The grocery store. Cheryl’s marriage.
Okay, technically she hadn’t handled Cheryl’s marriage, but she now felt strangely invested in it.
Maybe being calm didn’t mean nothing annoyed you. Maybe it meant being annoyed and continuing anyway. Maybe peace wasn’t floating through life like some beautifully moisturized woodland fairy.
Maybe sometimes peace was simply sitting on your porch at the end of a ridiculous day and realizing you had survived it without actually biting anyone.
Lily took a sip of coffee.
Kevin appeared at the screen door.
She smiled. “See? We’re learning.”
Kevin knocked over a plant.
Lily stared at him.
Kevin stared back.
She took another sip.
“I’m going to give you five seconds to reconsider the direction your life is taking.”
Kevin walked away.
Lily smiled.
Progress.
She leaned back in her chair, watched the clouds drift across the evening sky, and decided she had learned something important. Tomorrow, she would continue working on inner peace.
But tonight?
Tonight she was ordering pizza, putting on sweatpants, and staying away from motivational videos.
Because personal growth was exhausting.
And Lily had already been calm more than enough for one day. 😂
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