“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

29 November as I publish this, and the day after day march through our days seems a brisk and breathless march. What shall we be this day, different from the one before? What will define the moments between arising to meet it and pulling the covers up to dismiss it? Days are precious things indeed. This one ought to be unique in some way memorable, but likely a lot like the one before unless we step out of ourselves in some way.

This business of living through ourselves offers a path. We are becoming who we will be next, this to that and so on, and through ourselves we traverse a lifetime. Through ourselves we might step boldly into the next or we opt out and sing the same song, like an old star on tour playing nothing but the hits. Through ourselves we may reinvent the day and shape it into something surprisingly different from our other days.

Seen through another lens, this day, 29 November as I publish this, is so very different from the date a year before. The writer is entirely different from a year of days both challenging and invigorating. I suspect the reader might say the same. We live our days molded by them. Each individual stepping stone a memory, each book read, each summit climbed and each person encountered shapes us into something new. Through ourselves we’ve reached this point in our traverse. The view looks lovely and there’s still this path to navigate to the next peak. To step through ourselves into the next.