Last week while preparing for an upcoming conference call with some colleagues, I fell into a sentence in the materials assigned to us that has not let me go. The sentence was part of a short piece written by Mark Nepo, poet and philosopher, on The Work of Self-Awareness. His encouragement was toward taking daily measurements, noticing what has changed in us since yesterday, last week, last year and making needed adjustments in how we see ourselves, our living.He writes….”Otherwise, we fall prey to the merciless speed of a reactive life.” As I read this sentence it was as if I received a thud to the chest. Fall prey. Merciless speed. Reactive life. Yes, I knew this…have done it over and over. 

Each day we awake with a fresh page in the diary of our lives. This is the gift of the Sun and its Creator. It is true for each and everyone of us. And yet, I think of the many ways I do not treat this as the gift it is. Most often, I move through the minutes and hours of a day bouncing from one thing to another without harnessing the wisdom of yesterday’s realizations, yesterday’s lessons that sought to make something new in my life. Mistakes understood. Blessings of kind words and sweet smiles, signs of love. Challenging words read or heard, questioned and internalized. Encounters with a child’s vibrant face and an elder’s soft, wrinkled hand. All these combined to make yesterday’s imprint on my soul. In truth, they left me changed, different at day’s end.

Our inclination is to live the old patterns, to get on the treadmill and keep doing what we have done, reacting to each and every pull and tug that comes at us with a merciless speed. We do this in our personal lives, in our relationships, in our institutions. It is so easy to fall into this pattern without ever paying attention to the changes we notice within. The reactive life can have us ticking off things on to-do lists which can feel like progress but rarely allows us to nurture our deepest selves.

What will you do today that nurtures your deepest self? How will you make time for integrating the wisdom offered you over the last days and years, that same wisdom that wants to bury itself in the soil of your true self? I am asking these same questions of myself. With the gift of this new day, how will I stop myself from ‘falling prey to the merciless speed of a reactive life’?

For me, the natural world is a good teacher. Today as I look out our windows, the tulips are reaching toward who they might become in the gift of this spring day. Their fullness will come from patience, warmth, strength against the cold and wind that has returned. Who they were yesterday is not who they will today. They will no doubt need to do some wise waiting in their becoming. 

Watching the many birds who are building nests as they gather materials, I marvel at their drive, their fortitude for the future. Taking the cast offs of humans and other creatures, they are preparing for new life, theirs and their offspring. Many are doing so at remarkable speed and yet intentionality. They have their eyes on what is yet to come. 

May today not find us falling prey to the merciless speed of a reactive life. Instead, may it find each of us….humans, tulips, winged-ones….waking to the gift of this precious day, never to be repeated, pure gift from an unimaginable benevolence, an embracing grace. May this outstretched offering be received with the hope of the new life for which we all long even when we do not realize it.

Blessed be. 

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