Today


                                  Rereading letters from an old friend, I remember who I am.
Talking with this old friend, I experience the feel of who I am. Slowly, slowly, I become me again.  Over this past five years, I have forgotten. I have been a leaf, curled up and darkened, desiring nothing more than to take on any other color than my own.  But today, on the day I fly off to my granddaughter's graduation, I go with my own blaze of color and a feel of well-being.

     "We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." Good old Carolos Castaneda (probably older than old, by this time), said that sometime in the sixties, inside one of the Don Juan books.  It's true.  Like stress, whether it's bad stress or good stress, it's still stress. But the results are different. Expressions, happy or sour, make wrinkles. But the wrinkles are different. Our efforts and attitudes can make for different life circumstances. But the circumstances and situations often can be happier or at least richer. Fuller.

     I'll choose that.

          I once had a wonderful patient who had lived, as a little child, in Berlin, during the Second World War. I saw her the other day and she told me she is reading Victor Frankel's beautiful book, Man'S Searach for Meaning, wich Jim and I once read aloud to each other. Being a child while your world - - no, while your  family is being bombed, is a terrible thing. You can not look to your parents for safety. Your parents can not clear their faces of fear. Their voices change. Their nervous systems change. And you, the child, your autonomic nervous system is never allowed to adequately develop.  This is only one of the many extreme examples of what can happen to a child who is brought up in a war zone, whether it is an actual war with fighting soldiers, or a family war zone, with fighting family members. 

"We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."  - V. F. Wow. And, yes. What does Reality expect from us? To stay present. To stay real.

And, when you fall off the path, to get back on it. More than that,to become, yourself, the path.

This is a tiny blog, written so that I do not forget this hour.  I have only a few moments before I leave for the ferry so one more quote I've been keeping for myself forever. Itt's from the ancient Jewish philosopher Philo.  Philo said,  "The true name of eternity is Today."

So, see you around. From Today.  And that's a long, long time.