Is this moment OK?
A voice in me says perhaps I should be in another
Should be somewhere else, doing something else
With someone else, as someone else.
Perhaps I should be further ahead than I am.
Perhaps I started at the wrong place
And will never have a chance.
Perhaps I have not done enough or well enough
Perhaps I took a wrong turn
Somewhere back along the road.
More than ever I remember
I am hearing and observing this “perhaps” voice.
It is a funny voice, I think
Where does it get its information?
Its accusations have become monotonous to me
I see that it truly does not come from me
In fact, it truly is not alive at all
It is a tape recording, a mindless machine voice.
It is caught in an endless litany of “not enough”.
There is no life in it and no life in listening.
It is a relic, an echo
A memory that has not caught up – and never can
With here and now.
It is a here-and-now would-be destroyer
Except that here-and-now is
So much bigger, so much stronger.
This moment is nothing but alive
It vibrates, pulsates, sings, reverberates.
The present moment does not see or hear
The “perhaps” voice at all.
There is no contest.
When I step from “perhaps” to this moment, I am uncontested.
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1 comment:
Do you find that the "perhaps" voice is getting louder as we age? Or is it diminishing as we realize that it's simply another "should" packaged in another box with another bow? Shoulds come from everywhere...if we've conquered our parental shoulds (and do we really ever conquer them?) these days we have shoulds from our neighbors about how our yard should look or shoulds from our companions about how we should dress or wear our hair and such. And the shoulds we put on ourselves at this age...can't we cut ourselves some slack? We've made it this far and in most cases, we've earned the right to lounge a little, treat ourselves a little and not always be in a contest with who we were in years past. Don't think I can write about this 'giving slack' process like I know it...I'm still holding on to the dreams I had 10-20 years ago that are significantly out of my reach now.
Growing older isn't for sissies...
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