Reset

For the past 40 years I have worked very hard. Set goals, made plans, achieved goals. Set new goals.

During my recent illness, I realized that there isn’t anything that I want in my future more than I want to be in the present now. I do not need to work so hard. Just wake up and see what the day brings.

[Woooooosh]

Did you hear that? It was a lifetime of struggling and wanting and pushing getting sucked out the space capsule of my life and into deep space.

The sun is reflecting off my neighbor’s house, just barely above the horizon. There is a squirrel that just found a nut he buried between the flagstones of my backyard path. He has shelled it and eats it on the path.

I am afraid that I won’t remember how to do this when I go back to work. Then, I remember that it was work that first taught me how to just be. When you are caring for a dying person, after you have given the morphine and changed the sheets and counseled the family about what is happening, then you just be with them. Often, that is the most important part of the work.

I can do this! I can do this! I am positively giddy with excitement.