Like sands through the hourglass
… so are the days of our lives.
Those words, now infamous from the soap opera I wasn’t allowed to watch but snuck anyway, are forever embedded in my brain. I’m pretty sure I came right out of the womb with a healthy dose of existential dread.
Impermanence is a fact of life. At least this 3D reality of being “human” at this particular moment in time anyway.
The smarter ones among us learn to use their awareness of it as fuel while sadly others, often either stay woefully blind to, or neurotically anxious of, time slipping away. Regardless, both cause stagnancy towards goals and a lack of peace in the process.
We all die eventually. The question is, what are we going to do with the life we have in the meantime?
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver (excerpt from Poem 133: The Summer Day)
Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931
There’s a beautifully poignant tension balanced between BEing and BeCOMING.
To allow ourselves the opportunity to deeply savor where we are right now (always in the eternal now), while also reaching for the next iteration of us that we wish to evolve into.
It’s a both/ and.
Can you honor who you are in this present moment while allowing for the longing, excitement, and purposeful challenge of moving towards your next goal?
I recently watched both my daughters graduate, one from college and one from high school. They plan to leave home for their next adventures before the year is out. I will be an empty nester.
I find myself with a cacophony of emotions; one minute I’m excited to no longer be in the “directly responsible for another human” phase and the next grieving the end of their childhood.
Yes, I will always be a mother. But this current chapter is closing. It would be a shame not to honor that.
When I was nearing the end of grad school myself, we would-be therapists were tasked with running a process group among ourselves. Each week we would take turns facilitating the group and then journal about our thoughts afterwards to be read by our professor.
At the end of the semester, she asked us to say goodbye to one another, much in the same way we would ideally do in a therapeutic group setting. We resisted but she persisted. “YOU MUST,” she said. “No matter how much your psyche wants to wiggle out of acknowledging loss, no matter how much it tries to justify that you will likely see each other again, honor this moment! This is what it will be like for your clients. THIS IS THE HUMAN CONDITION. Even IF you have classes together again or end up working together, THIS space is over. It will never be like this again.”
She went on to direct us to share with one another the impact each person had on us and our wishes for their future. I couldn’t help it, I cried. I’m pretty sure as the oldest person in our cohort, and a die hard existentialist, I just felt it harder. *le sigh*
I’m thankful now though. I see the beauty in my own melting clock (a la Salvador Dali). As the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote:
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
So dear one, wherever you find yourself in life today, I hope you find deep satisfaction in your BeING and great hope for who you’re BeCOMING.
P.S., If you could use someone to process life, love, and business with, I’d be honored.
