Visitors

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This weekend was a beautiful one. Two of my wife's friends from graduate school (class of 1966) visited. It was the first they've seen each other since that time. They used to drive to their field placements in Akron together from the Cleveland area a couple of days a week. All three got married, had children, and then lived out their lives. Now, over forty years later, thanks to the Internet, they have reconnected. Its as if the intervening forty odd years did not exist. It was fascinating to witness.

Much older, grayer, and wizened, these three students, now Masters, came face to face with a sort of timelessness and a shared construction of reality with a few cracks. "Remember? Don't remember?" As each sought common ground, they each differentiated with the expectation of inclusion.

I admire My Little Honey and her two friends. This took courage. Clearly, people can and do care deeply for one another, and the constructions we call memories, can form a sort of knitting that holds each together.

Being in the moment, appropriate is the moment, and each moment's condition demands its own attention and authenticity. Letting expectations drop away like so many bags at a train station, we learn to recognize there is wisdom in letting go of those worn too thin.

Time to create a new story. Perhaps. But this time we should know: our stories don't define us; how tightly or loosely we clutch them does.

This is the Zen of Now.

Be well.