Homecoming and the Now

My handsome hubby comes home today. Can you believe it has been four weeks since Scott left?  I can't.  When we first came home to have Isla, this moment seemed an eternity away, a fuzzy spec on the horizon.  Scott returning from Grenada was a milestone for us because we knew that when he finished his work rotation, our time here on land would be coming to an end.  We are now on the home stretch of this visit, the slippery downward slope that occurs at then end of any significant hiatus where time seemingly goes into overdrive by passing even more quickly as the days become numbered.

The other day I took a fantastic yoga class where the teacher talked about the concept of time and how we are always moving from point A to point B, carving up our lives in digestible chunks.  Everything we do has a beginning and an end, it's how we humans create order in our lives. "But..." she continued, "it is just as important to pay close attention to the middle, the transitions - and be mindful that incredible things can happen in the 'in between' as well".  I am not talking about anything new here, being present in the "now" is not a new concept.  It is one, however, that becomes harder to master as the world around us becomes full of distraction. "We're living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence," says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace, and he's right.  It is hard to be present when we have a thousand and one responsibilities, when we have schedules to keep, when we have places to go and people to see.

This time home, this "transition", has been incredible for us.  "Don't you miss the boat?" people ask.  I always answer that, yes, of course we miss our boat and our life afloat - but this "visit" (even if it was 5 months!) was always a brief rest-stop in between adventures, it always had an expiration date.  That simple fact of impermanency made living on land a pure joy, a time to cherish, a time to take advantage of and appreciate because it was never going to last indefinitely.  I think that if we always look at our lives as constantly changing, if we are mindful that no condition is permanent - perhaps we would all live a little more 'in the present'.  If you knew exactly how many days you had left to live, would you live them differently?  How?  Would you love a little more? Would you exercise more patience and practice more compassion? Would you laugh a little harder and care a little less what others thought?  I think it's an interesting question.

The First thing to understand about the universe is that no condition is “good” or “bad.” It just is. So stop making value judgments. The second thing to know is that all conditions are temporary. Nothing stays the same, nothing remains static. Which way a thing changes depends on you.

Neale Donald Walsch

Scott comes home today which means we are mere weeks away from moving aboard our new boat and starting a new chapter in our lives.   Despite what it might seem to all of you out there in cyberspace, however, our journey never stopped.  We just changed tacks for a little while.

Love,

Brittany, Scott & Isla