Maybe you’ve heard this story before. A traveler stops to watch some men working. One man pushes a wheelbarrow past, and the traveler asks him, “What are you doing?” The man scowls and says, “What do you think I’m doing? I’m pushing this damned wheelbarrow. It’s all I do, all day long.”
A few minutes later, another workman comes by with a second wheelbarrow. The traveler asks again, “What are you doing?”
The worker smiles broadly and then gestures toward a structure farther down the road. “Can’t you see? I’m building a cathedral!”
I thought of this last night while I was watching my daughters and their friends set off fireworks in our cul de sac. And I thought of it again this morning, as I turned the hourglass over and began writing again.
“I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.” -Henry David Thoreau
“To focus on what you don’t want and don’t like is like getting into your car and programming into your GPS the exact location of where you don’t want to go.” -Jacob Glass
Fifteen–or sixteen–years ago when I was in the application process for my current teaching job, I came across a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn about meditation. I couldn’t see that I had time to meditate. But he insisted that it wasn’t hard. He suggested meditating while walking or driving. He suggested a tree meditation that appealed to me. Just look at a tree (I don’t have the book with me, but this is what I remember) or a group of trees and ask, “What is my path?” We had recently moved to our house on a greenbelt, and so I had trees I could look at. In the early morning, before my daughters woke up, before the day’s routine began, I would pour my cup of coffee and step onto the back deck, look at the trees, and ask, “What is my path?” I don’t know what role this meditation had on my getting a tenure-track teaching job, but I know it relieved my anxiety.
Fifteen minutes a day on the manuscript, no matter what else is going on. As July dawns–a new on-line class to teach (and a new on-line system to learn), trips to take, daughters and their birthdays–that is the path I intend to follow through these trees. I want to remember to enjoy the trees and the path. I want you to remember, too. Just stop, look at the trees. Ask “What is my path?” Breathe.