I slept late this morning. I had awakened during the night for no obvious reason, and woke breathless, heart pounding, in the grip of anxiety. I forgot to take it at all personally, or to read anything whatever into it, these were simply sensations I woke with. I got up. Opened some windows to let cool night breezes blow through the apartment. I took a seat on my meditation cushion, and gazed into the night sky, obscured by clouds that roiled and shifted, a kaleidoscope in shapes and shades of gray. The world was very quiet. Some time later, apartment cool, heart soothed, content and comfortable (except for this aching knee), I returned to sleep quite easily.

Moments are neither magical nor cursed, not really. They are what I make of them, myself, with my choices, my perspective, my baggage… What I do with any given moment is what makes the moment what it seems to me to be. That probably seems crazily obvious. I need the reminders, sometimes. 😉

Yesterday, after plans to hang out with my traveling partner fell through, I found myself inspired artistically, and spent the afternoon painting. My knee is not really happy with me this morning, and I pay that price in continued pain, instead of feeling it eased today. It’s peculiarly a price worth paying, although a wiser voice in my head suggests that had I approached the work differently, I could have also taken better care of this knee while I painted. Choices. Practices. Verbs. I keep at it, and continue to improve on how I approach such things. I don’t get much chance to be smug about successes…if I stop practicing, I generally forget fairly quickly how I was managing something. LOL These days that’s more a humorous inconvenience than any reason to treat myself badly.

I find myself thinking about the vast potential that exists in life – in my life – and how little of that potential I’ve tapped, even though I’ve been wandering around for 53 years on this gigantic jawbreaker hurtling through space. There’s so much more. It’s really no wonder life can seem so busy, or overwhelming, or mystifying. I’ve spent most of my life just bumbling along from one moment to another, occasionally doing some things (or people) I’ve really enjoyed, but without any really clear plan (or map)… and there’s so much to do and learn! I’m grateful there’s no expectation that being intelligent, well-read, or entertaining to know, requires me to learn everything, because… it’s not really possible. At all. Much of what I think I know, when I reflect on it, actually amounts to acceptance of what some other person has discovered, proven, noted, analyzed, stated more clearly, theorized, or observed, and written down, considerately enough, for the rest of us to benefit from. It gets called ‘education’, and I suppose it serves me well enough. I’d love to see particles in motion… I’d love to hear now-dead languages spoken by native speakers… I’d love to visit all the exotic remote places of great beauty, wonder, historical significance, and mystery, in person… Ah, but it’s not about time, or even money, in so many cases the things I have the good fortune to learn about don’t even exist in this moment, at all. How fantastic that I can learn about these things!

Human experience holds so many potential choices, options, circumstances, and perspectives… live a million lives and I would not have lived them all. There are no duplicates. There are no ‘do overs’. There is this fragile vessel, this mortal lifetime, and this very long and varied menu of choices and possibilities.

What matters most? Is it a diagnosis I don’t yet have? Is it a job I no longer work, or am not yet working? Rent? Bills? Housework? Is love what matters most? Or is it… now? This moment? This one pin point in time that gives me the power to choose my adventure?

Choose. Begin again.