‘I used to be the queen of 5 and 10-year plans’

Dorrie Koller, who lost her husband, live-in mother and dog all within months of each other (in response to this post about Minx Boren):

I used to be the queen of the 5 and 10-year plans. I made Mother Russia look like a total beginner at this practice. 

I really learned the hard way that you don’t have ANY future until it is firmly in your past! And then, it is over with! You only have right now, and as my dear Don used to say, “If all I have is 5 more minutes, can I at least spend them happy?” 

I think living in the moment means understanding exactly what is directly affecting your survival at this very minute. 

For the past 4 years I have been living in a house of falling cards. Yet, to keep my sanity, I had to see that while they were all falling, not one was actually hitting me directly on the head and ending my life. Cards could and did fall all around me, to the left, to the right; I had to step over piles of them . . . but I was still stepping. Maybe not happily, but I was still moving. 

I kept moving not knowing what I was coming up to next, just knowing that unless it stopped me, I would probably keep moving. When I see how the next step keeps appearing in the nick of time, like a platform rising up from the void, I think it is as if my life was planned out ahead of me, but kept secret from me so I would not try too hard to make it happen or even change it with my own will. 

I think of trying to train my new pup to walk on the leash. He wants to be in charge and pull on ahead, dragging me everywhere. I tell him he must stay behind and follow me; take his cue from me
— because I have his plan and adventure firmly in place, which I will reveal when we get to the corner and the next corner and the next corner. He hasn’t got a clue. All he is supposed to do is walk, nicely, beside me and great things will come. 

I think of myself as that puppy. I will soon be approaching 60, yet I still want to pull like the puppy I am. Only in the last couple weeks have I begun to get an inkling that if I just quit pulling so hard, things will take their natural time and I will soon be in another place other than here. 

Having said that
— I wonder why I’m always in such a hurry to leave “here”? 

Perhaps “Here,” with its wrinkles, gray hair, spider veins, widowhood, peeing pups, and too much work, is the most perfect place to be? 

Because “Here” is where the air is that I breathe. “Here” is where I physically am
— in this skin
— living. 

Inside me is “Here.” I am not a bad place to be. 

“Here” is wisdom, love, patience, acceptance, forgiveness
— everything I need to stay “here” with peace. If “here” is me
— then “here” is with me where ever I go. 

Hmmm
— strange piece of comfort I just found….. 🙂 

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