grounded growth

I have a lot on my plate.

You know, the kind of overflowing-plate-feeling that jolts you awake at 3:42 in the morning? Where you toss and turn until you get up and write down what you’re thinking for fear that you’ll forget it and things, then, wouldn’t be as they should?

I’m busy. Aren’t we all?

I am well aware that my busy is ridiculously un-busy compared to most. I don’t have any kids, I don’t have a yard, I don’t sit in traffic on my way to work.  But somehow, I am always consumed with something.  Even when I’m relaxing, I am planning my next move, thinking about what’s next and all the million and five things that I have to do, should do, could do.

It seems as if everyone around me is on this same crazed trip.  We’ve been programmed this way.  To do. To have. To know. To get where we are going.

Somewhere along the crazy rat race of it all, I have forgotten that I already am where I am going.

My dad and I went on a trip a few years back up to Newfoundland; 3600 miles on the back of my dad’s bike.  He mapped out the trip, plotted our course and steered the beemer; all I had to do was hold on.

In the first minutes of the trip I marveled at how much I could smell, hear, see from my perch on the road.  And then, just outside of Hartford, my mind took over.

Instead of just being, I began thinking about being. And then I began criticizing myself for thinking!

Before I knew it we were halfway to Nova Scotia and I had already planned and re-planned the next year of my life, judged myself for it and forgotten all about how amazing the wind felt rushing through my helmet and how cool it was to smell the trees as we entered Maine.  I had no where to go but my mind wouldn’t stop.

We pulled into a pie-shack that Dad had raved about and ordered one up for the two of us. Not one slice, one pie.  Dad stretched and proclaimed, “this is living!” and we sat together at a picnic table on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

I can still taste those blueberries. I can still hear Dad making up stories about the lives of the little old ladies who worked in the shack.  I can hear the cars whizzing by and feel the soreness of my butt from not being used to the bike seat. My mind was quiet enough, finally, to notice and really feel all of those things.

We ate the whole amazingly delicious pie.

Yup, life is busy. My mind is busy. I can plan my next move three-million times.  I can run myself ragged with work and school and obligations. I can try to find that next-best thing that might just be around the corner.

Or, I can slow down and savor the now.