Here & There

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a wonderful week. My son turned 17 last week….. a year away from 18, and it felt significant. The passage of time is a constant but there are moments where it is more intense and this was one of them for me. I found myself longing for those younger years when I was the center of his universe instead of a tangental figure. Those years seemed so simple.

It was at that point in my inner dialogue that I remembered this beautiful passage entitled Here and There by Mark Nepo and it became my message for my classes last week.

Here is always beneath There.

I remember sitting for a long time on the edge of a summer lake, watching the far shore. I could see early light flood the water in the distance and this somehow made the other side seem exotic. Every morning I’d sit on my small edge of lake and watch the other side, imagining that a certain mystery awaited me. With each day its call grew larger. Finally, on the seventh day, I had to go there, and, up earlier than usual, I rowed across the lake, beached my small boat, and sat in the exact spot I had been watching. 

As I looked about, the aura of otherness I had seen from my daily perch was gone. I was somewhat undone, for though this far shore was beautiful and peaceful, the wet clump of shore I ran my hand through was the same as where I’d begun. 

I started to laugh at myself. For looking back at where I’d been sitting every day, I saw early light flood the water in the distance and now where I’d been living seemed exotic. Now a certain mystery called me back to where I was.

So often we imagine that There is more full of gold than Here. It is the same with love and dreams and the work of our lives. We see the light everywhere but where we are, and chase after what we think we lack, only to find, humbly, it was with us all along. 

HERE is just as good as THERE. That was what we focused on in our practice on the mat. It is easy to focus on what we used to be able to do or hope to in the future, but what we bring on the mat every day in the here and now is ENOUGH. Joy is not in the next pose, it is right HERE where we are. 

We tend to apply this perspective in many aspects of our life… looking for the joy just around the next corner, the next move, promotion or life stage. We convince ourselves that what we have here is not enough. Mindfulness offers us the space to step out of the longing and see a broader perspective. The power we have through our practice is the realization that when we look a little deeper, often what we are chasing we already have.  

During those earlier parenting years of constant soccer games, gymnastics and swim meets, I distinctly remember wishing for days some time in the future when the logistics of life would be easier; when my children could drive and arrange their own social plans and didn’t need me so much.

Now, with those years behind me, I ache for them sometimes. Life was simpler… less high stakes problems most of which I could solve. Now I am backstage, offering advice they may not take, and they are center stage in their own lives. I laugh at myself too when my mind fantasizes about how calm and peaceful those early years now seem from the view from “the other side of the lake”.

The lesson is powerful; HERE is special, wonderful, amazing in all the ways that it is. THERE may be as well but THERE is not better than HERE, if only because HERE is the gift of right now. Thank you for sharing some of that gift with me by being HERE with these words.