Gratitude for this One Wild and Precious Life...

eschaden
5 minutes ago
5 min read

As of 4:37 this morning, I arrived at 56. So weird. I feel about 35 on good days, other days I am perpetually stuck at 13. I see the woman aging in the mirror every morning and keep a kinship with her, her life, her struggles, her successes and her accomplishments, but I also feel like I am not quite sure how I got to be this old. I really didn’t think I would ever live beyond 30. Yet, here I am. 56.

And it has been one wild and precious life. I think I have made good use of it, most of the time. I have worked on my stuff, have used the experiences of my life to hone me, to shape me, to carve out the toxic parts and allow them to be hollowed out in an effort to create space for something more solid and life affirming to grow in its stead. As with all things, I have made solid progress but still have large margins for growth.

I guess today I want to honor the wild and the precious. I have LIVED! I have done the things. I have defied convention. And yes, that has always been a goal. I have been one to set the goals of normal people, achieve the intended goal and then worked quite diligently to dismantle it all and begin anew. And I am grateful for all the disintegration and the rebuilding. It is, again, life affirming to feel like the curator of my own life, my own destiny and my own path. I have absolutely taken the one less travelled by and that has affirmatively made all the difference.

I am grateful I was not afraid to blaze new trails. And in those times I was afraid I was more afraid not the blaze the trail, than to forge a new path forward. I am grateful for the Buddhist path I found at 13 and continue to plod along today. Without it, I am not sure where or who I would be. It is the place I return to again and again, still. And it grounds me with practice and routine. Keeps me tethered to a spirituality that I might get lost without. So I am grateful to and for Buddhism for giving me the dharma to walk with for most of my life.

I am very grateful to my wild, untamed recklessness. I less afraid to do the thing, than not do the thing. I have started over so many times I have lost count. And I have gotten quite lost along the way. But there has always been for me this inner compass that directs me forward in my life, that tempers the wantonness, the rashness, the impulsiveness, the absolute commitment to myself. I care most about what I think, how I feel and what I am doing than I do most other things. You be you, that is fine. But I am going to absolutely be me. And yes, there has been a great deal of selfishness along my route, but for the most part, that selfishness has morphed into self protection and care, mired among those who would steal me away and lock me down into some prison of their own making. And yes, I am aware, I have constructed a fair number of emotional and metaphorical jails of my own along the path.

I have immense gratitude for every single minute of this precious life. I see that not everyone gets to lead a life at all. Some of us walk this path until its inevitable end, never really feeling like they lived at all. Some are burdened under the lash of trauma, heartbreak and loss, and never can quite stand up in their own life and live it.

I know that every breath is sacred. And every moment cherished. I live in countenance to these concepts every day. And I get lost just enough so that I am always having to find myself and recreate some inner working within me, lest I become lost forever to myself and unto you.

I am grateful to the authors whose words have guided me when I have stumbled and foundered. I am grateful to the poets that hint that there is more to this life than meets the eye, to a far more worthy existence than mere surface dwelling.

I am grateful to all the teachers, to the lessons they have brought, and all the pain I have endured and suffered, and the instruction and ability to transmute them into a life line that has never failed me, even when I was absolutely sure it would.

I am grateful to be alive, in good health (as far as I know), present and in love with living this most amazing, beautiful, precious, wild life I have been gifted. I have not always sought to honor it, in fact, at times, I have done my very best to destroy it. But, always I am led back to this internal compass that pulses with the beat and rhythm to the cadence of life and living. Capable of embracing the paradoxes that vex and frustrate me, and use them as instructive guides to show me my way when I get lost.

It has always been an inside job that I have been very committed to making an outside job. And that has created a fair amount of wreckage. But has led me to the ultimate and unrelenting conclusion that I must first be true to me, if I shall ever have any ability whatsoever to be true to you.

I am grateful to be 56. I am grateful for every day I have been granted thus far on my life's grand adventure. And I endeavor to enjoy, love and be present for whatever comes next for me in life, in living, in loving and in the grace that abides deep within my soul.

May we all find peace and the source of peace buried not so deeply beneath our own surfaces. And may we all endeavor to share that with others we meet and love along the meandering pathway through this life.

Again, still...

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver.

I miss her presence in this world so often and much. But she lives on within me, her truth a legacy of thought and prayer and instruction. Please, tell me what you plan to do! I really, really want to know.