THE NOW

New Year’s Eve; traditional time for reflection, resolutions and taking stock. I try to keep myself focused on the present, in the moment, on the Now as Eckhart Tolle says. After they start paying you to stay away from work, if you wait for the culture to point the way or throw you a line you can fall off the cart altogether, on the fast track to irrelevance. So I ask myself what is important to me, right now. As soon as I get an answer, that’s what I act on. I’ll ask myself again in a few hours. Ironically, that’s what we should all be doing, young to old. But Tolle was right when he wrote his little book and nothing has changed. All I’ve ever had to work with is the Now and I still have that. 

2014 was good. I finished with good health, family, good friends and enough to pay my bills. I covered a lot of miles, gave my passport some exercise and captured a few great photographs. There were speed bumps and a tumble or two but you don’t get redo’s; I won’t mull over it. 2015 has a loose schedule but schedules have a way of morphing into something else. My daughter and I have seats reserved on a river raft for the end of August. We ran away from home, the two of us, in June of ’89. Everybody else in the family had jobs and we saw the writing on the wall. If we stayed home we would be mowing grass and cleaning house all summer. So we threw bikes and sleeping bags in the pickup and headed for the west coast. Together, we discovered the Grand Canyon. You may have seen the movie and heard the stories but you can’t experience it vicariously. We promised ourselves that someday, we would float the Colorado from top to bottom. I was there four years ago with my granddaughter; realized if we were going to float, it had to be soon. This is the year. 

The Now has me in Baton Rouge for the New Year and I’ll work on celebrating some bubbly at midnight. The Grand is too far out for me to give it much thought. Tomorrow will be high priority when it becomes the NOW, and the day after that as well. But the morning I find myself on the beach at Lee’s Ferry, AZ and we are packing our dry bags onto the raft, it will be the only thing on my mind. 

I collect quotes; not a bad way to close out the blog for 2014. Most quotes are too long for me and either cliche or clever word play. But some are worth keeping. These are favorites.

“What day is it?”

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favorite day,” said Pooh.

A.A. Milne

 “Do not dwell in the past nor dream of the future.                                                    Concentrate on the present moment.”

Buddha