The Path Ahead

The path immediately ahead is not nearly so alluring, I know.  Not Italy, not even new-world red tile roofs and shadowy arcades with learning deep in them, the wisdom of the world held there, but an unlovely urban space in sight of a freeway, where we'll be expected to go on with an overload of work that isn't satisfying either.

I'm curious to know, though, if—with openness, good will, the mindfulness I've been practicing—I'll be able to find moments of nicely weathered stone, doorways into or through, a breath of green, a window with a friendly face, a square around the bend with a café table.  If I treat this change as exploration, opportunity for movement, time for getting out of ruts and clearing a different way forward, maybe it will show me exactly what I need, for me.

I always stay put way too long, in what is merely comfortable.  Or worse, in what has been used up and in turn used me up.

As I head off for another half-day of clearing out the office where I've been less than myself for several years, but to which I have formed a strange (but typical) attachment, I will be drawn forward by the bright promise of hope given me by this most mindful poem.

     The Cloudy Vase

     Past time, I threw the flowers out,
     washed out the cloudy vase.
     How easily the old clearness
     leapt, like a practiced tiger, back inside it.

     —Jane Hirshfield

image:  Yehuda Edri