I’m sitting on my deck, listening to the stream and wind chimes. My zen frog statue sits happily in the balmy air. I’m wearing a blue t-shirt emblazoned with a giraffe in sneakers.
I may be leaving my little garden cottage in Mill Valley soon. I may be here for many more years.
My work may be completely changing. It may simply be in a rest period between two eras.
Yesterday, my network chiropractor said, “It’s like being in mid-air. You’ve let go of the trapeze but haven’t caught the next bar yet.”
That’s exactly how life feels. Things are moving now, differently than they have over the last ten years. I can see possible directions, but nothing has landed.
We’re floating in the in-between.
Everything is possible in the in-between. Potential unfurls in front of us like rainbow streaks through oil on asphalt after the first rain.
I’ve always had this sense that I’m waiting for my real life to begin, like it’s some fairytale just beyond my reach. Whether that’s something I came in with or the effect of too many Disney movies and Danielle Steele novels on my impressionable young brain, I can’t say.
But even the Disney movies know this: the adventure comes before the happily-ever-after.
Because life is happening now.
In fact, now is the only time life is happening. Life is not happening in the past and it’s not happening in the future. All we have is this moment, this one, right here.
Happily-ever-after never comes.
Because that’s the end, and we don’t end.
So I pause every so often throughout the day and take a deep breath and notice what’s here now.
I feel my butt in my red deck chair, my slippers on my feet. Watch the sun float through the leaves to form lacy shadows on the ground. Notice the energy in my heart, the thought forms swirling around my head, the way my ankle hurts a bit for no good reason.
Life isn’t later, life isn’t what happens when I’ve finally checked the boxes on my list. I know that but I haven’t always felt it.
I don’t have to create some magical experience for myself, I simply have to notice all the magic that’s already here.
Yes, a nearby bathroom when you really have to pee counts as magic.
We’re just living life. It’s all happening now, even when you’re floating mid-air. Especially when you’re floating mid-air.
Life happens in the in-between.
Summer solstice sun, filtering through the trees. Seen by living life.