Great Expectations

            So much of my life, I have waited.

            Waited for jobs. Waited for love. Waited for prosperity. Waited for what was not.

            One day I woke up—eyes wide open.

            In my realization I recognized that being on the path to something was more important than actually attaining it.

            As I look back, I see life wasted on expectations, withered away, crumbling amidst a sea of wind.

            Time is nonrefundable.

            Regretting time lost, solves nothing.

            Wishing I had said what I hadn’t, brings pain.

            Hoping for what is not, brings heartache.

            Believing for what could never be, leaves me hanging in space between heaven and hell.

            Action trumps talk.

            Doing paves a path.

            Walking on the path, I meet my heroes, my nemesis, my lover, my teachers, and my God.

            Expectation along the path takes my eyes and focuses them forward—not a bad place.

            But what about looking side-to-side and top to bottom?

            Have I missed the fun, the joy, the tipping and the teetering to run faster toward something that may never be?

            And for what? To miss what is…

            I walk along the good path most days, but sometimes I carry with me a heavy load.

            I hold my accolades, my enemies, the could-be’s and the would-be’s of my life in a torn open heart, losing blood and life force.

            Time spent wondering is time lost again.

            “Let go!” I hear from spirit. “You’ll gain an empty heart to refill along life’s path.”

            Tick, tick, tick. I’m fifty-one, soon to be fifty-two.

            In letting go, do I gain?

            Today, as I lay on my yoga matt, something unhooked in me, and I lay still—maybe more motionless than ever before, like a grain of sand on my forehead.

            My head let go of my mind, and my heart breathed in ephemeral mind.

            I need not achieve anything more than what I am.

            I am completely, unequivocally, in the hands of God.

            I can try no harder than can God easily.

            I can only release and let go to be more me, more authentic, more unusually peculiar and spectacularly made.

            With every ache, with every pain, with every sadness, with every goal attained, nothing really changes within me.

            I have always possessed all that I am going to be and yet to be revealed.

            I hold the key to unlocking my passion, not God.

            I turn the key to my joy, not God.

            I sustain happiness in and with my life, not God.

            It is only “because of God” I can finally let go God’s creation to the Creator and say, “Fascinatingly made. What an interesting road for me. I choose joy and love on the path and toward the light.”