It’s 1999, I’ve just been hit by a car as a pedestrian and left in the middle of a busy street as the car zooms off. The sirens I hear are for me. They’re never for you. This time they are.
Fast forward to August 1999, after rahabbing for six months at my parent’s house in Oakland, spending inordinate amounts of time healing my body, journaling, praying, and moving through a slew of feelings.
I decided it was time for a vision quest, with no other than Roshi Joan Halifax, of Zen Hospice in Santa Fe, NM. It was a 12-day Zen retreat, 4 of which would be spent solo on some part of a mountain with only water, no shelter and a lot of time to contemplate.
I was ready to contemplate.
I had been giving another shot at life after being left for dead in the street.
My biggest question was “What am I here to do?”
That is the question I sat with for 4 days. Four days in which I had prayed so much for sun, because of my fear of being rained on, that when we got so much sun, I was praying for rain. Right?
As I chased shade moving from one rock to the next around the skinny coniferous trees, I kept asking: “What am I here to do?”
The answer?
“Get present.”
“No really, what am I here to DO?” I asked.
I wanted specifics.
“Become a nurse. Or become a civil rights social worker. Or become an interpreter.”
I got, “Get present.”
That is all.
Four days.
Chasing shade.
Begging for rain at the end of those 108 hours.
“Get present.”
I’ve chewed on that answer for years. I became a yoga teacher the following year. I’ve spent thousands of hours on my mat, “getting present.” But I’m a fast mover, a hummingbird, someone who flits from here to there. Erez, my former spouse, used to tell me, “You have thorns up your ass,” meaning you can never sit down.
Yes.
Thorns up my ass.
Indeed.
Well, THIS year, 22 years after that retreat, I got the best inoculation of “getting present” when I got COVID in March. Though I have practiced getting present for years through yoga, dance, writing, art – being knocked on my ass, with no energy, no ability to talk, no real ability to DO anything, I got present.
I really got present.
Here at home.
With nowhere to go.
No, with no energy to GO anywhere.
Nothing to do.
I got present and my dogs sat with me.
My garden bloomed and morphed all around me over the last six months.
I watched it all.
I got present with what I was going through.
The low energy. The shredded lungs, the coughing.
I got present with gratitude, with appreciation for the love in my life.
For my mom, my friends, the resources I have – my home, my beautiful things.
I got present with the enough-ness of it all.
It’s enough to just be.
Here.
Right now.