You and Today

by Gloria Wendroff -

Ignorance is not bliss but innocence is. 

Innocent, you are happy. What does innocence mean? It means you are not caught up in the past. It means you look at everything with new eyes, not old. In innocence, your eyes are bright and your face merry.

When away from innocence, you are looking at the past and in so doing, you are also weighing the future. The past and future exist in your mind. The present isn't really a midpoint between the two.

Right now is where you and your mind and thoughts belong. 

You are receiving a meal right now. Yesterday's supper is over and tomorrow's has not been made yet. Do you really want an old menu or a future one? You really want to be served in the diner of today.

Would you rather flip through old photos than live today? You can dream the future, yet there are no photos of tomorrow.

Of today, of course, you can take pictures, yet you can draw on the slate of life for this moment only. Second by second, this slate is wiped clean.

Today, even in its brevity, is more valuable than yesterday. 

You may have had gold yesterday, yet it is today that lands in your lap. It is today you mold. The gold of yesterday is no longer pliable. What you have in your hand is today and all it offers you.

The world holds sorrow because it holds attachment to the past. You are attached to what was. Each new day is not meant to be held in hostage to the past nor is each new day meant to be forfeited for tomorrow.

Fresh is better. Fresh cream is better. Fresh butter is better. Fresh from the oven is better. Eat now.

The past is already stale. It is no more. Only in your thoughts was there ever a past. What are memories really? They are like bank robbers who rob you of today.

There is not really a today. 

There is a moment that you parcel out into partitions of time and call a day. Time, of course, does not really exist. Time doesn't even really exist on the recorders of time such as your watch. Your watch knows nothing about time. There is nothing to know.

The past is a still photo. The minute it was taken, what it was taken of has already moved on.

Catching this moment is like catching a butterfly. The butterfly flies away. It moves too fast for you. And when you catch it, it is not a free-flying butterfly any longer. A butterfly caught is immobilized.

It is the liveliness of a butterfly in flight that you really want, and that can't be captured, you understand. Certainly a pressed butterfly is of the past and has no liveliness of its own. Let your eyes catch butterflies as they fly past you.

This is how you catch a day. 

You don't really catch it. You can only move with it. 

You follow the sun of the day. And when it is nighttime, you follow the light of the stars or you follow the moon or is it the moon that follows you?

What does it matter all this when you, a vibrant Being, are an offering to the day, the same way the day is offered to you? You and today are a twosome.

Dance together as you have never danced before.

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