Yesterday, while pondering the choices we make, this extraordinary contemplative poem dropped into my inbox from Steve Garnaas-Holmes.
FATE
Sometimes it seems life knows what it’s doing
+ Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Unfolding Light, 15th November 2023
and then suddenly forgets, or maybe gets distracted.
You’re just going along, we say, and then suddenly
everything changes in an eyeblink. A kid is born.
Tires screeching on pavement, a slip on the ice,
one little thing that happens—and the whole world
comes undone, changed forever, the before and after
pictures so mismatched they could be from different movies.
We question the persistence of reality. Maybe we were wrong.
But maybe there’s more persistence than we see. Maybe
the tires have been screeching on that pavement forever,
the egg fertilizing, the mail dropping through the slot. Not
that fate has decreed it from the beginning, but that everything’s
possible, and life gets to choose every moment, even something
odd and incongruous. But that means that you do, too. Even
now, tires screeching, you can choose something beautiful.
We get to choose every moment…
Pause. See differently. Re-story 🌿