Whew, it was hot today. Normal temps here in the Bay area in June can be between about 60 and 80 degrees. Today it was about 102 here where I live. And us with no air conditioning. Saints preserve us!
I am grateful this evening for having a sense of accomplishment. I have a lot to get done. I spent some time sorting, organizing and packing a few boxes. I’m preparing for a move that could possibly take place sometime in the next eight to ten weeks. It would be helpful to know where I’m going. It would take quite a while to explain all the various life twists and turns that have me planning for a move, and that is not the focus of this blog. Instead I will say that even though I don’t know where I’m going, I’m starting to be pretty sure that I’m going. It’s just a matter of the when and the where. Life can funny like that. One day things seem to be relatively clear and straightforward and the next all hell can break loose and nothing appears to be at all straightforward and clarity is nowhere to be found, having become obscured by some insane, malevolent fog.
By now, of course, I have learned to flow with it, as best I can. The uncertainties have abounded in various degrees for over a year. So if I don’t know exactly where I’ll be going, I can still manage to get myself as prepared for it as possible. It could be across town, it could be across the country. It all remains to be seen. I am grateful to be learning how to deal with uncertainty; real life is, after all, full of it. Things are much more uncertain than we’d like to believe. I looked up the word uncertain in the dictionary just now, mostly so I wouldn’t keep using it repeatedly in this paragraph, and here are some of the synonyms for it: “unknown, debatable, open to question, in doubt, undetermined, unsure, in the balance, up in the air; unpredictable, unforeseeable,” etc. Yep, that begins to describe how it is.
The Buddhists talk about impermanence as one of the three marks of human existence. Things are transitory, always in flux and this is a good thing. Except of course that many of us didn’t receive the memo. We’ve been led to fear or at the very least be unsettled by change. I myself haven’t always been a big fan of it. But change is completely inevitable; it is in fact one thing we can count on: the changing nature of everything. So I am learning to embrace the unknown, unpredictable, and unforeseeable and trying to relax and become comfortable with the uncertainty. It’s going to happen anyway, I might as well learn to roll with it.
The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote the famous words, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry].” No matter how I plan and scheme and figure, I can’t control how things are going to turn out. So, as I prepare for my move, it seems completely congruent with the wacky incongruence that has been my life that I have no idea where I’m moving to or when. Nevertheless, I’ll continue getting ready. And if perchance it turns out that I’m not moving after all, I suppose I’ll have to roll with that too and be as gracious about it as I possibly can. Given the choice to go willingly with gratitude and a sense of humor and adventure or to go grudgingly with a sense of gloom and doom, I think I’ll go with gratitude. But I bet you knew I’d say that!
(Please enjoy the smooth sounds of Nina Simone as she sings “Everything Must Change.” Listen to and resonate with the words…)
