The Hurried Hope

Its 9:30pm and I am reminded that night is well in its way for me. With a desire to prolong it, I make myself some chamomile tea and settle into my bed with pillows stacked to comfort my back. I find my perfect spot and retrieve my nighttime book, from under the bed. I take a sip of the tea and the warmth of the herbs envelops me. One of my little pleasures in life, I remind myself. With a deep sigh I look for the bookmarked page and begin to read. The words float in my head; I read a paragraph before I realize I haven’t taken much in, so I go back to the beginning of the page. Before long I’m living another’s life, living their chaos and their struggle. Scrunching up my eyebrows, tensing my shoulders, curling my toes under the sheets, I reach a catharsis and sigh with the character I have become involved with. Another sip of my tea forces me out of the bind. I am compelled to come back to a center that I keep experimenting with.

It’s always been this way, my life. Becoming involved in my own content- doing this, doing that, getting here, going there, running hard, sleeping sound, watching TV, fussing over not getting what I want. Then, there’s involvement with others’ content too. Like the characters of my book, the clients I see every day, the friends I am with as well as the million others I wait with at every traffic signal, with my windows rolled down. There is no assumption of a center when I am so focused on the surface. It’s present though, when I stretch and breathe into an asana, when I sip my chamomile tea, when I am lying in my bed having just woken up from a dreamless night.

At the end of the running around, vagabond like, I feel a hint of metallic angst and bitterness. Why am I not following a center, moving from within my center and living from within this center? I ask myself. A center of calmness and patience, a center that is not in a hurry to achieve but that can trudge along a path, any path and yet find joy. A center that can make peace with expectations that will either be fulfilled now, later or never.

Several compromises, some compulsions, obsessions and a ton of procrastinations make this goal of moving into the center such a forlon journey, an impossibility, if you will, to move to a centered place within oneself. And whats more, I find that this is a pattern many of us take to-clients, friends, family alike; one that is filled with obstacles that seem to want to turn us into chisseled glasses of perfection.

It’s funny, the very paradox we put ourselves in. I say “Find your center, Damn it!" - Always in a hurry to perfect myself, and yet always moving away from the very goal simply because I create this complex maze of many "if's" and "should be's" and "has-to's" to reach there. Is there hope for the Hurried then?