Right Now

I started my year on Facebook (which is a whole other story) with the following quote:
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was in a book of inspiration given to me by Maree, and it was one of those quotes that you read and process and you feel you're already there, almost like deja vu for the soul. Two months ago I had to block out what lay behind me, and shield myelf from what lay ahead, in order to maintain a sense of sanity. Sometimes you have to learn life lessons from repetition, and the germ of this lesson really began after I miscarried at 11 weeks in my first and hardwon pregnancy.

The loss of a pregnancy has many layers, which I won't go into here. But picking up afterwards and examining my biggest anxieties and sense of grief, I found that my biggest fears were failing to get pregnant again, and being successful in getting pregnant and miscarrying again. Neither of those things are in my control and both are potential futures that don't exist at the present time. Accompanying my future-focused anxieties were fears about what went wrong - could I have done anything to prevent the miscarriage? I am far too rational a person to blame myself for the mysteries of pregnancy for long - if the doctors can't tell me why, then I am not going to be able to divine the reasons why these things happen. However the lesson I learned was that the past is gone - it cannot be changed. And the future is yet to be, it cannot be known, and is not always within our control.

Handy lesson that one, when you find out you have cancer. When did the tumour start growing? Was it to blame for other health issues? Was it there during pregnancy? Why didn't it show up on earlier tests? How quickly did it grow? All these questions are natural reactions, trying to find the root of the issues, and something to blame. Stopping yourself from asking the questions is one thing, preventing others from doing so is a different matter! Here are the really good questions though: what is your prognosis? Will you be able to overcome the cancer? Will it come back? In short, are you going to die? My answer to that is that we're all going to die. We just don't know when and from what cause. Maybe I know my cause of death. Maybe I don't. I only know that we all have today, and we can't always be sure of that.

Which brings me back to Emerson, and the New Year, which is always a time for reflecting on the past and making plans for the future. Both utterly futile, unless you want to learn your lessons from the past and then leave it there - in the past. Or resolve to be better and do better in the future, without relying too much on events or circumstances you have no control over. The only thing we can count on is the present: who we are right now, what we know right now, what we're capable of right now, what we have to give right now, who we care about, right now. These are the things which lie within us - not in the past, and not in the uncertain future. Right now.