Sitting at the Edge of What Is

The poet David Whyte speaks about the courage to step outside your door to meet the unknown, and then to belong in the way only you can. It’s a call to shift our focus from what might have been, and sit instead on the edge of what is. The things we never got only distract us. All the power is right now. 

Someone attending my retreat said it well: “I used to say, “If only I’d known then what I know now. But now I realize, if only I knew now what I know now, I could change my life!” Life is now, and we need the courage to step outside our doors and live it fully. To live with open hearts. To know what we most deeply know and serve the world out of that knowledge. 

What do I know now? I know that heartache is nothing more or less than a possible opening through which the power that sustains life can be glimpsed. It’s a searchlight. Here, right over here, it says, is where your love is small. Here’s where stubbornness is in your way. Here’s where you’re pushing away the very people who could teach you. Here’s where you’re clinging too tightly. Here’s where you won’t give up control. Here’s where you demand that others be what they are not. 

Give up all disappointments. Step outside your door. Stop focusing on what “might have been” and sit at the edge of what is. 

– Paula D’arcy, retreat leader and author (redbirdfoundation.com)