Thou Shalt Not Be Late
I know it has to do with my father--he was, shall we say, committed to being on time. He was also committed to encouraging his wife and 3 boys to be on time. Being the youngest, and seeing my brothers catch hell for holding up the show, it must have seemed really, really important for me to get it right.
This particular commandment is not only carved in stone but hardwired in my neurons. It's a superhighway among neural pathways.
If I'm paying attention I can feel this gift from my dad as driven-ness. I'm agitated when I'm 'behind' time, a man on a mission. I get tense and terse and tend to see things as 'in my way' rather than simply being what they are.
Life has been telling me for a long time to slow down--to loosen up and to open up. To stroll more, to linger, to chat, to visit, to savor, to bask.
But it's a slow process--like negotiating right-aways for a Greenway in Brooklyn.
So I love it when help comes--like this bit from Mark Nepo's Seven Thousand Ways to Listen:
When fully here, we touch what is before us: life-force to life-force, essence to essence. When asleep or numb or moving too fast, we only touch surface to surface. And without that glow of life-force, that glow of essence, things just get in the way. It seems that the feel of truth and meaning waits below the surface, and it's the heart of listening that allows the life-force in all things to touch us.
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I'm working on going from seeing things IN the way to seeing things ON the way. It seems a little farfetched that we'll often meet 'essence to essence' but it doesn't seem much of a stretch at all to begin intending to mingle at least some of what we truly are as we bump into each other on the Way.
