“…Except for
the point, the still point,
there would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.”
T.S. Eliot, At the Still Point of the turning world
To tell you the truth I’ve come through a few dark nights but in the middle of them I have asked the question: “What’s the point?”
Perhaps you have said or have heard a friend, colleague, client, or family member utter “What’s the point?”
I have had thirty-eight-year-olds ask me the question, “Where do I go from here and what’s the point of even asking?”
I’m about to turn seventy in a few months and I’m finally fully ready to say, “There is no point. There is only the NOW, and in this moment there are the people we love and who loves us.”
Like many of you reading this, I have to inhabit the present NOW. I’ve spent way too much time dissecting my part and projecting my future.
About the only times I’ve been fully in the here and now was when I was teaching, lecturing, counseling, or writing and a handful of times with my loved ones.
I have been forced over these Covid months how to more often stand in the cool lake of the present. Maybe I have ten, possibly twenty years, to keep learning how to reside and rest in the NOW. We’ll see.
For now I will let others speak who are much smarter and wiser and know way more about the eternal present than I:
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Buddha
“…The more you are focused on time – past and future – the more you miss the NOW, the most precious thing there is.” Eckhart Tolle
“Always hold fast to the present. Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.” Goethe