Ready

I’m never sure when I am ready to be opened up. I face disappointment, failure, loss. They all have the potential to open me. They all can have an effect more beneficial and lasting than success, but only when I am ready. Only when I yield to being opened up.

It seems I am hardly ever truly ready to be opened up by a friend’s growing distance and inattention. I often miss the opportunity to be opened and miss the chance to turn another blank page of unrealized expectations. I think I was ready to be opened up by the death of a close friend, and that allowed soothing grief to flood in, accompanied by a deep sense of my friend’s continued presence. I doubt that would have occurred had I not been ready to be opened up by the loss.

I wonder if I can be ready to be opened up by poor health or by failures that quietly stalk me uninvited. My failures as a gardener are sometimes on my mind, and I wonder if I can be ready to be opened by failures in my garden. Can I be opened up to something that success never seems to provide?

I wonder if I will be ready to be opened by the failures that every aging parent must experience. As an older parent, I become aware of my past opportunities lost, my failure to support, my unhelpful words. Am I ever ready to be opened by these growing awarenesses of my old actions as I watch my children grow older?

Success has seldom transformed me in a positive manner, except perhaps to strengthen the husk of my self-awareness. Mostly the breaking open times, the splitting of that self-supporting husk have served to allow me to grow. The breaking open times have allowed the mystery inside to unfold, the wonders of the world to come rushing in.