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Once on a trip to Vermont, my friend and I pulled off the road and into a rest stop. Rest stops in Vermont redefine that concept. They are clean, green, friendly and generous. At this particular one, volunteers were offering free samples of Vermont cheese. It hardly mattered that the weather was nasty – rainy and cold, even though it was the end of May.
I walked over to the map posted on the wall to get a sense of how far much further we had to travel to reach our destination. As is almost always the case, there was a marker that designated exactly where the rest stop was located. You Are Here! In fact, I wasn’t anywhere but awash in anxiety. Would I be well enough to take a walk with friends? Would it ever stop raining during our short stay? Was I strong enough to help with the driving? Should I have agreed to come on this adventure? And on… and on. I turned and looked at my friend who was busily chatting with the people who had offered us the local cheese samples. He was in the moment, and I wasn’t.
Life is about being right here…right now. Why is it so hard to do this? The mind races forward, and zooms backwards. Like the map on that rainy day, staying put, stopping to observe we are only here now, is serious work. That’s all any of us have, the present-present, that one second of a heartbeat. Whether we are moving forward in life with disability, chronic disease or acute illness, the future looms and scares us. Sometimes the improbable or the probable future can be as frightening as the illness itself. Ghosts of better times past and terrible times haunt us, waking and sleeping.
It’s a natural response but it isn’t about being here now. I think of the future as the great equalizer. The healthy and well are not any more able to foretell the future than we are. The future is as unknowable for those who are suffering as for those who are not. What do we share in common? You Are Here … Now. That’s all any of us have at any given moment. To believe otherwise is to be foolish and arrogant. Although it may seem small – it is an event of the greatest import. For some of us on this day, here might be a sliver of blue sky glimpsed from our beds. For others it will be the ability to go outside and to feel fresh air caress our skin on a cool spring day. It isn’t what we want or wanted that is as important as saying to ourselves: I am here now, right here, just here.
It is the essence of gratitude for the gift of being.
© 2014 Alida Brill
