Someday is Today
Oh the Places You’ll Go! —Dr. Seuss
Are we stuck in the dreaded “Waiting Place” that Dr. Seuss describes as “useless” because it is so easy to be stuck there “…waiting for a train to go, or a bus to come, or a plane to go, or the mail to come, or the rain to go, or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow, or waiting around for a Yes or No, or waiting for [your] hair to grow. Everyone…just waiting.”
Are we stuck? YES and NO. Of course, we’ve all been stuck waiting for a virus to run its course, but inside each of us we have had to decide what that really means. For some there hasn’t been as much deciding going on, just a daily putting one foot in front of the other trying to get by. For some it’s meant despair. For others it’s meant hours to wait and ponder leading some to radically change their lives. And for others it’s meant time to reaffirm and recommit to the path they’re on. For me, this time has made me even more certain of these 3 things:
1) Change is inevitable and constant, 2) We all carry some darkness that we need to acknowledge which just means we’re perfectly imperfect, and 3) There’s a light inside us all and in all that is around us…
These days have also meant more Facebook time where I recently noticed a line from the poem by 13th-century Persian poet, Rumi, that says: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” After people started going back and forth about all the problems we seem to be having knowing where that field is and how to get there, or even in believing such a field exists, let alone what to do when we get there, I added my two cents by writing “we are there”. I see us all standing in that cosmic field, right now, not waiting somewhere or planning to go there. We are already there with our “doings” in hand (both wrong and right) standing face to face. This looks very different than the Waiting Place. This is a Meeting Place. A place where we arrive with our imperfections and perfections, together. We are not simply waiting, we are ready to move on into the next iteration of change we are already and inevitably facing. New choices have to be made. New steps need to be stepped. New courage needs to be found.
Rumi experts say this “meeting place” line was probably not even in the original translation but instead referred to the opposites we are always balancing like darkness and light:
“In the way Rumi has experienced these two thoughts, they are not in conflict. Each one is neither good nor bad, and instead are part of a unity, like the yin and yang symbol. One would not exist without the other. In the ‘field,’ the gathering place, love overcomes the apparent difference in these two aspects of human experience. In that place, differences no longer have their former distinction, and no longer have any value. [Like] a prism can split sunlight into different colors. When the colors are re-joined into one light, the former differences are of no importance.” —Quora
So, as we move from a waiting place to a gathering place let’s stand in that field, which is right where we live, and move through this new change together.
As Rob Thomas says in his song Someday -
“…when everything is over and done, You can shine a little light on everything around you, Man, it's good to be someone. And maybe someday we'll figure all this out, try to put an end to all our doubt, try to find a way to make things better now.
Maybe someday we'll live our lives out loud, we'll be better off somehow, Someday.”
Let’s make that day, Today.
We are in the field.
Let’s make it so.
