What if being in the now isn’t about ‘getting ready’ for the now, but simply being conscious of what is right in front of us, and appreciating ‘the all’ of what is present?

What if being present isn’t about rushing around getting it all done or fixing ourselves all up so we can relax in a future now, but rather, relaxing into being okay with where we’re at with what is here, right now?

What if being grateful and tender is more important than being busy?

I have been busy.

For the past month I have been culling, clearing, cleaning and organizing so that our house could go on the market.

In the process, I have come up close and personal with all the ‘stuff’ we’ve accumulated. I’ve had to make decisions about what to keep, throw away, put in the Pod in our driveway to be moved to our future home.

In the process, I have faced my tendency to clutter up my life with superfluous stuff.

What if, I created space in my home, at all times, out of habit, so that there would be no need to rush about, culling, clearing and cleaning?

What if, I chose to live less cluttered and more clear?

What if, I treated every moment as ‘the now’ in which I relax into because I am not constantly scurrying about filling in spaces, piling up papers and creating things to deal with at a later date?

What if, I dealt with what appeared when it appeared and made choices in the now that didn’t mean I had to make choices at a future now about what to do with the stuff I didn’t use in a past now?

What if, I simply chose to make my life more simple and taught myself to be grateful and tender with its simplicity now?

Hmmm…. what if I chose to simply live with the questions and appreciate this moment right now, with its stillness and beauty, with gratitude and tenderness?

Or, as Rainer Maria Rilke so beautifully wrote, be…

“patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”