Being Present, Right Now

Some days it strikes me that most important things I learn through the days I’ve already known at one point or another. Being present is one of them.

This morning I was walking back from the gas station where I’m working. I stopped to pet the neighbor’s dogs who came running out to the road when they saw me, chatted with the neighbor with snowflakes falling on my face and we talked about the house we’re building. He worried the dogs would frighten me, but he doesn’t know me well enough yet to understand my affinity for mutts.

Dragging my boots in the snow on the roadway I walked past a big, crooked fir tree leaning in a field. Above the road and above the hillside beside the road a large, black bird circled in the air. I walked up our long driveway to the shell of our house, past the house and into the forest behind it and spent an hour being in the forest, witnessing the slow movement of the treetops and branches, the wave of a cluster of usnea blowing on a gentle wind. I started walking back to the trailer wondering when I’ll become what I’m supposed to be, when I remembered that I am already.

We hope for future moments, distant times when something might be different or better. We look forward to weekends, paydays, holidays. We look towards being cured, healed or helped. We pin a lot of pressure on the future, and it doesn’t even exist.

I am what I’m supposed to be right now. With all of my fears and weaknesses, but my confidences and strengths too. There is no future “better” state.

There is a fine line between acquiescence and acceptance. It’s important to be onside with the latter.