Journeys

I don’t often dwell on the past.  Perhaps it means I have been successful, to a degree, of incorporating the honimyo spirit into my psyche.  Perhaps it is because simply that no one likes to revisit a nightmare.

To speak metaphorically, it is as if I was forced to cross all twelve lanes of a Los Angeles freeway.  The price of my survival was to be transformed from a magical gazelle into a dusty banged-up turtle.   My chances of survivial were slim.  But I did.   I have been making my turtlish way through life since.  Most times I do not think of how far I wish to go versus how fast I can travel.  Or how often I am forced to just stop.  There are times though, I raise my eyes up and blink through the dust, and realize that it isn’t just a patch of iffy weather stirring up the earth.  It is the herd of gazelles and all other long-legged creatures passing me by.

I know then, that they will probably reach those purple mountains in the distance, and perhaps even decide that they wish to go on somewhere else.  I am reminded then, that I may never get there.  My terrain today is greener and softer than in previous times.   I have the company of the occasional butterfly and bird.  I do not struggle so for every step.  I treasure the beauty when I find it.  I savor those moments deeply and passionately.

I get it though.  My journey is NOT to be the one I wished for.  It is going to be the one that it is.  I do not have the simple luxury of ordinary choices.  I have lived the sonnet:

The challenge is to remember that it is not the glass half full vs. the glass half empty.  The simple truth of my life is that I still have the glass.