Not Much Going On

People keep saying these are unusual times. It’s true, but still some mornings I wake up and not much is going on. It could be any morning. Just the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.   Just the leaves of late May fluttering gently in the first breezes of the day. Unseen birds warble and hoot from all directions.

When we don’t divide up our life into narrative arcs, then there’s not so much drama. Sometimes this loosening of the story happens through our intentional efforts to return our awareness to the vividness of the present moment. Sometimes it’s as if the story itself gets tired, goes off for a break, leaving us free in the quiet of the moment. These moments of ease, because of their nature, often don’t get woven into the ongoing story of our lives. When the narrative function of the mind comes back from its break, it often tends to leave out the parts that don’t cohere as neatly with its ongoing story of danger and struggle.

I am clearly an older man now. I can’t quite bring my self to write ‘old man’ yet. Whether this is due to the fact that more and more of my friends are in their seventies, eighties and even nineties, or to an unwillingness on my part to speak the truth—I’m not really sure. But from the ripe age of 67 going on 68, I can look back on my life and see many chapters: childhood, adolescence, college student, potter, dancer, food coop manager, partner, teacher, father, Zen student, school head, Maine sea kayak guide, life-coach, Zen teacher… Some of these roles are clearly in the past and some persist but are dramatically transformed. I am still a father, but my little girl is now a full-grown woman and no longer sits in my lap transfixed by the story we have read scores of times together. I’m still a partner, but my wife is no longer a young woman, but appears now as a woman whose age has increased with mine.

Time and memory are much more elastic and creative than they appear.

I can look back and clearly ‘see’ these chapters; the different jobs, roles and locations of my life. I was once a little boy myself. I lived with my family where Mom kept us fed and clothed and watched over our various comings and goings while Dad was out in the world doing mysterious and important things. While my siblings would probably all agree to the large outlines, but when we compare memories of the specifics, it gets a little more fuzzy.

Our memories and our stories are all based on things that really happened, but they are also tales told by an unreliable narrator—like a movie where you see the world through one character’s eyes and it turns out to be quite different from how he was making it seem.

We live in worlds that we participate in creating. The past and future are stories we tell that shape the quality of our experience in the present.

A long-ago bumper sticker: It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. I assume this was created by some associations of psychologists who were drumming up business. But it is true that the work we do on ourselves has an impact on how we experience not only the present, but the past and future as well. While no one can change the past, how we hold the story of our past has a huge impact on the quality of our life in the present moment. Likewise, though the future is unknowable, the stories we tell about what is to come play themselves out in our lives of the present.

But some days, the multitude of stores about who I was, who I am and who I will be fade into the background. An ease arises and it’s a little disorienting. I know I should be worried about something, but I just can’t seem to remember what it was.

A wise teacher once said: ‘When it comes don’t try to avoid it and when it leaves, don’t go running after it.’ So this morning, I appreciate the ageless life of cool spring morning. I’ll have a cup of tea and meander around the garden—seeing and smelling and listening to this green world of now.

Personal Practice – Stay awake today for the times in between the stories you tell yourself about your life. Notice the moments that don’t really matter—where you’re not doing anything particular, where you’re not being productive, where the grip of your internal narrator has loosened. No need to do anything with these moments except to perhaps appreciate the subtle ease and freedom that weaves itself into everyday life, even in the midst of it all.