Once Things Settle Down

Ram Dass said,

“The game is to be where you are. Be it honestly and as consciously as you know how.”

There’s something we often say, especially when things get busy.

You’ve probably said it a few times in the last few days.

Once things settle down.

After the trip. Once school starts. When the fall routine kicks in.

Then.

Then I will rest. Then I will call her.

Then I will start start my meditation practice, exercise, sleeping better.

It will happen in September.

The book. The walk. The beginning of whatever you keep meaning to begin.

Not the errands. The life.

But now, pause, gently, because this is where it turns.

You said this last August, too.

About last September!

And before that, too.

Once the holidays are over. Once the move is done.

Once the busy season ends. When the kids are a little older.

Ran Dass asks us to he honest about the arithmetic.

The settled season has been four-to-six weeks away

for as long as you can remember!

Here is why it never arrives.

Things do not settle. They rotate.

The school year replaces the summer scramble. The holidays replace the school year.

The calm stretch you are walking toward recedes at exactly walking speed.

It is not that you are doing it wrong.

It is that you are chasing a horizon.

The waiting is not before your life.

The waiting is your life.

There are people who said once things settle down

all the way to the end.

You have known some.