Friday reflection

Living richly in the present

“The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.”

- Sylvia Plath

Yellow wildflowers in a vase that looks like an orange juice carton

In the future there is workload and income, there is my daughter adjusting to a new school this fall, there is the calendar bullying my freedom. There is continuing to live in this dystopian world, striking just the right balance of knowing what’s going on, and protecting myself from knowing, so that I can go on.

In the badly-managed past there are the turns I wish the conversation didn’t take, the space I wish I had created, the healing I wish I’d begun much sooner. There are the patterns I wish hadn’t been cemented. The time I wish had been spent with friends.

In the rich present there is, well, everything.

The artist Morgan Harper Nichols was on the podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, and when Glennon Doyle asked her to describe peace, she said, “It’s this,” and she inhaled, and then she exhaled.

In the future there are graduations and weddings, births. There are stomachs doing backflips when crushes enter rooms.

In the badly-managed past my own stomach did backflips. I graduated, I got married. I was born.

It’s all a jumble, and it’s all happening all at once, and it all already happened. Everything everywhere all at once…

And the hardest, most important thing to remember, in the middle of this swirling tornado, is that life happens here, in the present moment. It’s in the present that we can live with all the richness in the world.

In the present, you are a mighty force.

- Amanda