At What Age?

At what age do we stop letting our children win the foot race and start running our best to push them to run their best?

At what age do we let go of the strings we've pulled since they were infants in our arms?

At what age do we step back and let them fail?

At what age do we let go of our ideas of what they should do and be?

At what age do we stop caring about what others think of them?

At what age do we stop worrying about what we think they reveal about us?

Just how old do we have to be?

The Shelf-Life of Happiness

Happiness has a shorter shelf-life than pain.

Over time, pleasant memories fade
into a solitary image -- a snapshot in the yard
with a water hose in the middle of summer.

Painful memories push deeper as they grow older,
like the long, heavy roots of an old tree.
They are bearing the heavier load.

Chopping Off Heads

Why do I chop off someone's head and jam it on a pike (metaphorically, of course) when I know deep inside that I'm raising my hand against myself whenever I raise it against another?

Why is it so hard to feel connected to others in certain situations? Why is it so hard to see our oneness? Why is it so hard to see that we are so much more than we think we are?

The Questions You Cannot Answer

Waiting for an answer when you already know the answer is the same as asking a question you cannot answer.

Three Paths

We each follow
three paths in our lifetime.

The first is the path
of our parents and ancestors.
This is the way things were.

The second is the path
of our friends and peers.
This is the way things are.

The third path is the path
of our children and grandchildren.
This is the way we want things to be.

Winter Solstice

On the shortest day of the year,
the sun sits motionless on the lip of winter.
A new season begins as another year ends.
The universe continues its unfolding
like an endless bolt of cloth.
To ask why is useless, but
it's still a worthwhile meditation
on such a long, clear night.

A Beach of Sand

A beach of sand.
A mountain of boulders.
An ocean of rain.
A lifetime of moments.
The Tao of ten thousand things.

Forgiveness and Apology

Forgiveness is something I do in response to someone else's behavior.

Apology is something I do in response to my own behavior.

They are mirror images of one another -- forgiveness and apology. They teach us both about ourselves and about others.

Which Is Harder?

Which is harder to take,
the first step of a journey or the last?

Which is harder to believe,
the first sentence of a book or the last?

Which is harder to surrender,
the first faith given or the last faith found?

A Piece of Wood Floating

A piece of wood floating down a stream
follows the current around rocks and over
rapids and shoals and past gravel bars.
It has no mind of where it is going.
It has no will to chart a different course.
It simply floats along effortlessly
on a watery surface always changing.
It bangs into boulders sometimes.
It drags and scrapes over tiny, hard stones.
It drifts across the warm, still body
of a long pool in the middle of the day.
After miles and miles of streams
and rivers and ocean tides, it lands
on a far shore, worn smooth to the touch
and bleached a pure bone white.

On Being Human

The human condition is such a strange experience -- to be swept along in this surging river of sight and sound and taste and smell and touch.

Our interior landscapes can be even richer and more turbulent than the physical ones we inhabit. If we tried to take in everything contained in just one moment, the flood would surely drown us.

That's why we have consciousness. Consciousness is one of the ways we limit the universe so it doesn't overwhelm us. Consciousness only lets in as much as we can handle.

Time is another way we keep from being overwhelmed. Time is like peering through a narrow window.

The best mystery for me, though, is that we're here at all. What an intense thing it is simply to be.

Going Extinct

We are impermanent. As a species, we will become extinct some day. The last of us will die, and there will be no more human beings.

All that we ever were will pass away into temporal dust, and the universe will continue its unfolding as if we had never existed at all.

Impermanence is the natural way of all of the ten thousand things. There is a season for everything, as the writer of Ecclesiastes promises.

This is our season. The best we can do is to experience it fully.