Here and There
It feels as if this is all of life:
That we rush out to “there,”
rather than being “here,”
because somehow we are afraid of losing what is “here”
if we’re not focused on “there.”
Yet when we focus on “there,”
we have already lost “here.”
At the beginning of this year, I did a rune reading with my coach. I’d never really explored runes before, but I’m always up for a good divination/self-reflection activity when it comes along.
If you’re like me and had no idea what a rune is, they are letters from ancient Germanic alphabets. Traditionally they were used for writing, but each one also carries a deeper symbolic meaning.
During my New Year’s reading, I drew the Dagaz—which looks like an hourglass tipped on its side.
As I contemplated its meaning, Dagaz came to represent “dailyness” to me. Dailyness is the idea of living within today’s boundaries instead of chasing certainty about tomorrow.
When I catch myself spiraling and worrying about things I can’t control, it reminds me to reframe my uncertainties with the lens of today:
Do I have enough money today?
Is my rent paid today?
Do I have food today?
Are my kids healthy and happy today?
Each day brings its own challenges, but it lightens the burden to de-emphasize what might go sideways and return to what is still right-side-up, right now.
Much of our suffering comes from trying to live in the past or control an unwritten future.
Worry is its own kind of worship. It’s a form of devotion to problems that do not yet exist.
There is a powerful truth in recognizing that the past and future do not exist in any physical place. We cannot travel to them. They live only in our imagination.
Memories, despite their weight, are unreliable narrators. The future arises only from the immediate moment, unfolding one breath at a time, and beyond our forcing.
Now is where our power lives, it is the only moment we have control of in real time.
The past and future can inform us, but this moment is the only one we can shape.
We can remember and plan, but even those acts happen here in the present.
We can redefine what we remember.
We can recalibrate what we expect.
But the meaning we give to past and future only happens in the present moment.
When we meet our ruminations soberly in the present, we see them for what they are: thoughts, not facts. That makes them malleable. If thoughts are malleable, so too are our memories, our expectations, and our patterns.
We come home to what is rather than what was or what will be.
All of life is just a series of Nows.
When become present, Here and Now becomes a powerful nexus.
Here and Now may be all that exists, but when we truly return to this moment, we tap into all that is possible. Every new beginning, every possibility lives here.
And so, the way we unlock that possibility is by truly arriving here.
Notice the heart that’s in your chest. It’s beat is like a metronome of now moments. Every beat precious, every beat now.
Notice the breath that’s filling you NOW.
You can’t store it for later the way you put leftovers in the fridge.
Yet you must rely on all the breaths that will be there when you need them, for the rest of your life.
Breathing is a perfect metaphor for all trust in what is. You can only bring in the breath you need now and you are forced to release it in preparation for the next one that is to follow.
Feel the weight of your body in the chair.
What is is like to inhabit this body, today?
This is it.
This is the place where your power lives.
Not back there.
Not someday.
Just here, right where you are, right now.
It all returns to the reminder in the opening poem: the moment we chase “there,” we let go of “here.”
Here and Now is the only place life truly happens.
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Is there something you’ve been fixating on or worrying about that could use a little dose of dailyness to bring you back to your power?
