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Don't Worry Breathe Happy - By- Ravi Shenoy Ravi Shenoy was born in India but has lived in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France and Finland. She has been living in Chicago and its suburbs since 1974. She loves her job as a reference librarian in a large public library. She writes book reviews for a professional journal. She is the mother of two daughters, one of whom is now married. Her husband and children look after her, leaving her free to watch storms, trees, birds and animals.

Sunday's horoscope said that it was to be a lucky day for me. It didn't start out too promisingly. I dropped the coffee grounds on the stove and newly cleaned kitchen floor. I'd just finished sweeping them up when my daughter knocked down a glass beaker that cracked into smithereens. I began to make samosas for an appetizer I had to bring for a baby shower that evening. Like everyone I used egg roll wrappers for samosa dough, the size must have changed since the last time I made them which was at least a decade ago. Try as hard as I could I not get form these square handkerchiefs into attractive looking triangles. I felt like a kid in kindergarten rolling out playdoh. After an hour I gave up the ghost.

I ran over to the Indian store, the placard hanging behind the glass door claimed that it opened at 11:30 on Sundays. It was 5 to 12 when I arrived. There was "Closed" sign still hanging and not a peep within the store. I drove to the neighborhood Jewel and settled on two packages of frozen potato skins. In the checkout line I stood behind a woman who was counting out her change penny by penny. As I made my way to the car I realized that I had a button missing at the waist. I realized this only because I felt a nip of cold air on my midriff. I had to be at work at 1:00 that Sunday so I raced home and changed into my comfortable ugly shoes that I hope will pass for Birkenstocks. So this was my lucky day?

Just about the time my blood pressure was going a few notches higher, I said to myself. "Be in the moment. Breathe!" My resolution for the New Year was to stay in the present and watch my breath. As I walked to the library I said to myself "Mind don't run." "Be present. Look around." I noticed that there were men outside the library, of assorted ages and races and they all wore brown loafers and white socks. Aha, so people wear white socks with brown loafers. One of them self-consciously crossed his legs as he saw me looking at his feet. Like me, I learnt most people feel saritorially inadequate.

Such is my life, made up of minutiae and when I stay in the moment and am aware, the banality of existence almost becomes art. Of course life is not always minutiae. There are times of personal crises when one could easily get derailed, but even in such moments I remember noticing the vastness of the sky and changing colors of the trees.

The minutiae of life are fodder for the diarist and the journal writer. It is a celebration and acceptance of the role allotted to one by what Neil Kinnock calls the "conjunction of events." It's like a rose in my garden accepting the fact that she is not a rose in the White House Rose Garden. I knew I had made the great leap to adulthood when I stopped pining for the unattainable and regrets over the path not taken, and forgave myself for mistakes made. Occasionally I revert to my old bad habits of brooding and unmitigated misery when things don't work out the way I want them to. But I'm realizing that "getting your knickers in a twist" over things you can't change is a total waste of time.

I had a great time at the shower. The other guests guzzled the potato skins. "Ravi made them?" they asked incredulously. "It's a long story." I began and never got around to telling them the rest of it. It's all right. Tomorrow is another day. And if it isn't I won't be around to worry about it. When I walked to my car, it had started snowing. Christmas lights were twinkling from all the homes. I felt a few flakes on my black jacket, exquisite, delicate star-shaped flakes. I gasped at the perfection on my sleeve. The present sometimes surpasses all fantasies. The horoscope had been right. It hadn't been a bad day after all.

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