Almost There

I’m in a speedboat churning through the water at full throttle, crossing a lake.

This lake seems to be larger than I thought. Near the middle, the sense of progress has given way to a feeling of vibrating in place, with no discernible change in position; no palpable journey underway, no distant shore drawing closer.

An odd thought enters my mind. What if this is not a lake at all but the ocean; and I am not on my way to a favorite café on the other side? Could I be dreaming? Strange that asking that, doesn’t wake me up.

A wave hits as I clear a peninsula to my right and I realize it was sheltering me from open water and from the momentum, which the freedom to roam always gathers to itself.

Whether I am awake or dreaming, my journey no longer feels like a vibration in the middle of anything. Yet isn’t there always, everywhere, an intimate vastness ready to teach us something? Perhaps that there are other living beings travelling or staying still, spread out in all directions? And would not all those others alongside my own small craft, also be beholding their worlds with eyes that care about their own journeys, their own longings and belongings?

If I didn’t hold so tightly to my own longing to belong, could I be free to travel a different path, a path that doesn’t claim to be the only one I can know? If there is an underlying sacredness being revealed in this living of life, can I just slow down and appreciate it?

Remembering to notice the efforts that others have made and are still making to create conditions of happiness for me, why do I not want to make life a little easier for those who are travelling alongside me?

Perhaps that feeling of vibrating in the midst of open space was not my own engine going nowhere. Perhaps that vibration is the sound of all the dreams and disappointments propelling each of us towards a horizon that isn’t really the limitation we think it is. Perhaps we are all already where we are because the not-so-distant shore we have been striving to reach has just docked alongside us.