We Are Here!

In the end there is no preparing for what we have not yet experienced.  All self-help books lie if they don’t admit that.  We don’t know what’s coming next.  Yet a plant to grow simply follows the sun.  It reaches up and out. Perhaps there is something in that beautiful simplicity we can learn from.

Like a plant we must continue to reach.  That may be the ultimate reality of launching something new.  It means reaching.  We must reach.  We must be following something.  As contingent beings (and we definitely are…look it up),  we must reach toward something outside ourselves. 

But what we reach for is not entirely up to us.

Shortcut on continent beings. They are beings that are not as independent as they would like to think.  Total independence is an illusion.  We may be free, to a degree, but we are not free to determine the results of our choices.  Certain things are strictly out of our control.  Embracing that now is key to moving on!

Reach.  But don’t worry about all the hundreds of facts out of your control.  Focus.  Listen.  The seed grows because it is focused.  It sees only the sun and reaches for it.  Reach.  Let everything else fall away.  In this very moment there is only you and your reaching for the sun. Feel it? Reach again!

Growing is ultimately a by-product of this reaching.  It is not something we control, in the strict sense.  We focus.  We look upon the sun.  We reach.  And beautifully, perhaps even tragically, we can not see the movement.  We inch our way toward growth, but can hardly measure the progress from day to day.

When the plant gets that first bud there is reason to celebrate. Sure, not with the pomp of final victory, but there should be satisfaction in getting to a milestone. Though not the end, it must beget a celebration. 

But not a big one. Not yet.

This is a place of tension.  Those who celebrate too much here forget the war is not over.  But those who fail to celebrate the battles won will not maintain hope.  Good news - there is a way to do both.  Milestones are just that: small steps of victory along the way of a long journey home.

Take them.  Take opportunities to appreciate where you are.  What has happened.  Notice.  Pay attention to where you have come from.  Where you are at.  How you got there.  Note the patterns.  Celebrate.  There is always another goal to hit.  Make it worth hitting.

What comes next is…well, next.