Managing and improving and walking down the path is not always forward. Some nights we go to sleep seemingly further away from where we wanted to get to than we started that morning. It is vitally important to remember that all is not lost. Life is not one of those game shows where once you miss a question you lose everything that you had built up to at that point. We don’t go back to zero. That is not to say that it doesn’t feel that way sometimes. And really, the destination is just an illusion anyway, it isn’t even real. All that exists is the path in this moment. This step, and once this step is in the past this new step. Hubris and greed and fear and self-deceit are what feed the mirage of destination.
Sometimes we go backwards for reasons that we can articulate. Sometimes we go backwards for reasons that we understand. Sometimes we go backwards for reasons that do not embarrass us. Sometimes we go backwards for reasons that our friends would understand. And, sometimes we just go backwards as if pulled by a relentless vacuum, the whole time wearing our best Sunday clothes and winning awards and having people love us and having our hair behave as we wish. Presidents go backwards, roll models go backwards, homeless drug addicts go backwards, you go backwards, today I go backwards.
Everything is relative, including direction! It is movement, it is between two states that do not exist. Movement, energy, change. You are not the same person today as yesterday, why would your “destination” be?
Even if this all sounds like hogwash, so what? Is it serving us to give energy and even attention to measuring and predicting and stewarding? If we live honestly and mindfully and move with compassion and love and hope we walk the path and it is a good path. How could we reach a bad place after a whole bunch of good honest compassionate steps? How could we take this current meaningful and good step if we were not right here right now, the product of previous steps, some of which we are conditioned to believe were backwards or bad? Don’t we want to be good and happy and helpful and honest? Doesn’t that happen more easily and reliably if we are not weighed down by guilt and shame and doubt? We are all human, we are all fallible, we are all weak, but we are all strong, and good as well!
I sure seem to have gone backwards with this sinus infection that is more intense today than it was a few days ago when it seemed nearly cleared up. Thank goodness for that, it has allowed me to slow down and experience the joy of writing these inspiring words and then reading these inspiring words back to myself, and if all goes really well, maybe even having someone else read these inspiring words and do good and spread joy and compassion. Sometimes I go forwardish and sometimes I go backward-like and sometimes I just sits. But here I am, the product of all of that and of everyone else’s steps as well, and I write these words.
N.B. These words were written a few weeks ago; happy to report that my sinuses are back to normal!
