Fairly certain I am going to look back and regret the time I have wasted in this life of doing and stressing once all the time has disappeared. The insane complexity of modern life and the fractured sense of peace and equanimity rob me of the gentle breeze that blows across my face, but only if I allow it.
Only if I separate it out. This neurotic drive to get it all done makes me laugh my own naivety. It strikes me hard, often, that I am going to look back when I don’t have mobility anymore and regret that I didn’t take myself off to natural surrounds even more often.
A week ago, during a long paddle, I saw two huge eagles making a nest on the corner of a local river. I was kinda dumbstruck by the enormity of it. Wow, it hit me like a ton of bricks, there is life that is truly living.
These are my teachers. Today I am lost in paperwork, taxes, bills, invoices, like thousands of tiny needles piercing my brain and I long for that bloody river and those teachers. But I have to remind myself that yes, even this is an experience that I will wish I could have again one day.
If only I could be back in that vital body again, the old man would wish. Here I am, right now though, taking the advice of the elderly man that I am not yet. Still in this precious, temporary body brimming with vitality and strength. How fortunate.
It downloads in my brain that we are whipping each other into a type of chaotic trance. Is, busy the measure of the success of life, I wonder? My conditioned brain thinks so but my heart knows differently.
Be alive now, it whispers, be awake here and be present. Yes, even if your body trembles with fear and anxiety.
Yes, be anxious, be frightened, be chaotic, rush and do, but know, watch and observe yourself. Equanimity is around the next corner, only as far away as the awareness that you are stressed is.
There’s something to loving it all and giving up preferences.
As I sit here at this table I can close my eyes and those eagles are dancing in front of me calling me back. Calling me to come out of my thoughts and back to this life. The texture of time changes as you get older, your perception grows, and if you allow it, the reflection brings the golden challis of wisdom rising in your own experience.
The wisdom of the disappearing years and the changing texture brings a message. This will also disappear.So, if not now, when?
Going to wait for retirement, the so-called golden years? They are all golden!
All precocious, perhaps even more precious are the most difficult years. Spill your heart, you might as well.
This is the moment we should cry tears of sadness and joy, this is the moment our presence should crack like thunder and our kindness should wisely hold.
Be not afraid of the silence and the vulnerability, be who you came here to be. One day soon, it will all evaporate like steam.
Gilesy