You never know. Things are going along. You get comfortable, used to the way things are. The nasty habit of taking things for granted sets in. Then, out of all that you have happily ignored, an army invades, the body erupts, flames leap through the roof, a thief crawls in through the night, an atomic fire poisons your sky.
Boom! Everything is forever and always changed. Water tastes like fear. Certainty is a practical joke. Your calendar should be read as fiction. Plans evaporate like spit on a griddle.
What can you do to prepare for disaster? A few things. But not a lot. You know what they are.
But nothing will make the shadow disappear. Not even more light. There is always a shadow, a fetal circumstance gathering strength in the womb of time waiting to be born.
One thing you can do, change your mind. Get real with time. No matter what time it is, it always now and now is enough if you are present, fully engaged, relaxed but alert, aware of the immensity of the burdened blessing of human life.
The doctor/poet William Carlos Williams wrote:
“A new world is only a new mind.”
With a new mind, free of prejudice against trouble and preference for ease, you get a new world, not new and improved, but new with depth and intensity and common things uncommon again. You are graced with a state of sustained astonishment.
The refrigerator is a miracle. The pear is enough heaven for the moment. Pictures float through the air and appear in your house. Standing after sleep is a dream come true.
The hand that you hold that you love is the world.
So what is a person to do? Again, you know what to do. Live without excuse, postponement, or delay. Live as if this day, Thursday, July 2, 2015 was your first, last, and only day.
You never know.
