We love the story of life as a road. Success is a ladder. Time is ever marching forward.
But we know it’s not true.
We are forever on shifting sands, sliding forward and backward and sideways and diagonally in our thinking, our feeling, our learning and our lives. Time swirls about us endlessly; effortlessly sweeping us back to That Day in the Third Grade…That Picnic by the Lake…That Long and Horrible Night…no, certainly time is the most unreliable of all the unreliables.
If we think of our lives as being linear, we cheat ourselves out of the fullness of our experience.
Plus, it’s that foolish linear thinking that leads to self-immolating thoughts like, “I should be more successful by now” and “Look, that person is more successful than I am.” We know these thoughts are lies, too, but if you only measure by the clock it is all too easy to slip those lies into your pocket and carry them around as part of your belief about yourself.
The more we learn about our art (our love), the less we know.
The longer we live on this earth, the more the years seem to pass in a day.
As our fortunes rise and fall, the more we recognize that money and status are no more accurate a marker of success than a new crop of tomatoes or a big hug from an eight-year old.
Today, challenge yourself to notice the ways in which your life is moving in many looping directions all at once. And how that is good and meet.
photo: “first tomato of spring” from The G-tastic 7’s photostream on flickr used by Creative Commons license
