I seem to be blessed with the earworms I need to hear. “Today is a bright new day,” sung in tight three-part harmony, circled round and round in my brain as I woke this morning. It took me a minute to remember the song and the singers, then I placed it as a YouTube video I watched a few days ago. With the refrain softly circling in the background, I lingered in bed, cat snuggled under my chin, until I heard the coffee pot click on.

Coffee in hand, I moved to the couch where I looked out the front window at cloudy sky, green bushes and trees, a splash of pink crabapple blossom in the distance. Birds darted through the inkberry bushes, landing briefly on the feeder that I will soon take down.

Today is a bright new day.

The lawn is getting shaggy, spotted with dandelions—I need to mow. I don’t aspire to a weedless expanse of emerald green. My lawn is a mix of various grasses and weeds, including the dandelions that are springing up in their glorious yellow. When I first moved into my house I dutifully dug up the dandelions, just as my then next door neighbor did. I would see her crouched in her yard, digging out the long taproots and flinging the plants into a bucket. But I soon gave up on dandelion eradication and chose to welcome them as a sign of spring.

Gray skies have now turned to rainy skies. Lawn mowing will wait. I’m not an exacting or precise mower. I mow around the violets blooming in the side yard and the clumps of forget-me-nots that have seeded mid lawn. One summer I left a big patch of clover that the bees were feasting on. I take different paths around the yard each time I mow. Sometimes I take a freeform approach, circling and weaving, spiraling inward until I can stand in one place and push back and forth a few times and be done. Other times I revel in straight vertical or horizontal lines. No matter what pattern emerges on a particular day I always use the mowing as a time to check out what’s happening in the garden, pausing periodically to pull up a tall weed or simply admire the flowering quince or smell the budding lilacs as I brush under them.

Today is a bright new day.

In recent weeks, as the world feels increasingly perilous, as people close to me struggle with illness and depression, and as I edge toward a major change in my own life, I’ve alternated between bopping along on an even keel and then, bam, sliding down into sadness and anxiety. One day, driving home after work, I found myself inhabiting a fearful, pain-filled fantasy that my active imagination elaborated and embroidered, before I caught myself and shifted my focus outward: there’s the sycamore tree that has stood in that spot for hundreds of years, there’s a bank of tulips, a crabapple in full bloom, a dogwood.

My mood lightened and I resisted the pull back into the depths. Later, I keyed up a Tara Brach meditation which focuses on sounds. Guided by her calm voice, I listened to the here and now sounds, the overhead fan on the porch, the family talking next door, a dog barking, my cat meowing, the rumble of my tummy, the tight, sore muscle in my back, the worry that tugged at me. I listened but didn’t linger, and slowly my perspective shifted. I remembered to take things one step at a time, moment after moment, to stay anchored in the present. To listen and let go.

Today is a bright new day.