Skip to main content
Imagine...
A half clothed three-year old, running ahead of you on the trail, his muddy feet and bare legs kicking behind him in the characteristic gait of the very young. He is chasing, with headlong abandon, after an imaginary friend named, "Now". Yep, "Now". All the while, he is yelling after his speedy friend, saying, "Get back here Now. Hey Now, Now, Now! Mommy, Now isn't listening to me!" "NOW get back here!". As far as I could discern, 'Now' was not a friend to stroll alongside, or chat mildly with about the weather or the quickening of spring all around. Rather, to simply keep Now in sight, one needed to maintain a dead run. Sadly, Now eventually disappeared over the horizon and was forgotten.
Well, the message wasn't lost. I am forever chasing after something.  In a hurry, I race after the time-piece wielding rabbit who dives as readily into his rabbit hole, out of sight. I have been thinking a lot about busyness, what drives it and why it is so invasive. I have been proverbially and literally chasing NOW for sometime, or running away from it. It is a sad state and just as ridiculous as the afore mentioned scenario that confronted me on a recent hike in Golden. Oh children. They manage to teach us the deepest lessons in the most simple of ways.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

china cat said…
I love it! I have a similar relationship with Now - always diminishing along the horizon, and I forever in pursuit of its companionship. Unlike Bodhi's friend I am the one running through the hills and my Now has stayed right where I left it - awaiting my return.
April 13, 2010 at 10:01 AM
Wind said…
Wow Now! I have completely forgotten about my friend Now. I steadily send all my love thoughts toward "Tonight when all are asleep". Maybe this isn't the best friend to have.
April 15, 2010 at 9:29 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

the way of the sunflower

A few weeks ago, I sat holding a sunflower seed in my hand, just prior to the mouth popping, mastication phase, when it's perfect elegance floored me.  I stared in awe at the tiny seed nestled in my palm and saw it, in all of it's possibility, for the first time.  A flower, a million seeds, a million flowers.  Each unique, each the same.  And suddenly I was dumbfounded by the arrogance of human. A small seed, with no big beefy brain to catalogue, categorize, prioritize, conceptualize, quantify, qualify, justify and deify, had within it the flower it could become.  Dissect the seed and there's no  flower, nor any glimmer of the life that will unfold when the seed surrenders to soil, light, water. I wondered. What arrogant assuming is it, to think, with our over indulged brains and narcissistic lens of "self", that we need "do", "think", "struggle", "fight", "hustle", "cajole" and otherwise dance our way...
1 comment
Read more