The death of my business this month has shown me that I spend most of my time living in a elsewhere future world. In six years, it has never supported me, so why not?
But letting go of it, has complicated linkages to other deaths in my life. The recent loss of my mother is loudly echoing inside my walls. The future financial expectations of a Secretariat-like-coming-from-behind-photo-finish is also among the dearly departed but mostly it is the death-rattle of my intimate and chronic future tense thinking that is revelatory.
I did not see this before. It was my habit or an unintentional blindness.
Perhaps grief has done its job to unmoor me, so I am seeing what before I edited out. By the omission of the vehicle of "when my ship comes in" or "when the business takes off," I have smacked, face down, in a Ram Dass chapter of "Be Here Now.' My lists for that future event, 'when it will get better" are significant:
- buy a house
- pay off the credit cards
- save some money
- go to Italy
It has been 10 months since my mother died and the heart of me can't DO business as usual. Normal is out of reach; grief is like a float trip on the river - no matter how I struggle to paddle faster and get through it to the 'better' future, I am still floating in it. But I can actually FEEL a current again; I am better. But I have been waiting for ...something. My point in this post is that this feeling of waiting is future-tense chronic thinking.
What is waiting?
It is a version of living in the future, saying now is not enough. I am not here but transposing myself into the future. It is another form of my chorus of "not enough." i.e. right now is not good enough.
But it is.
Right now is amazing. I am not 'Pollyanna" flat lining, the feeling is more like gratitude for ALL OF IT: the death and life everywhere. It is also a simple assessment of my life, here in the S.F. Bay Area. There is a rose garden in my front yard lovingly tended by the mad gardner of chestnut street. I have sunshine today and Lake Merritt to circumnavigate. My 19 year old Siamese is in love our little panther she-kitty. Their affection is inspiring. I have a community in the beautiful city of San Francisco, that I can go be in, traveling across the incredible new Bay Bridge being completed. My Brother and his family are soon to be on my coast, in Seattle.
2012 is a balancing act, to be sure, like a cat walking across the top of an uneven fence; we must be very, very careful. But even if we fall, so what? The universe is a friendly place.
When my father died twenty years ago, the last thing he said was "Don't forget to smell the roses." He saw me. I am seeing myself more clearly too. I prescribe a daily dose of Double Delights, Mr. Lincolns, and Fragrant Clouds up our noses. But if you can only find Golden Celebrations, or Maria Callas you are still (way) blessed.
We all are. AMEN.
