I used to spend a lot of time online, reading and writing blogs, commenting, seeing what friends were doing and thinking, holding forth and debating all sorts of things.

Lately, though, I've been finding myself pulling more towards home, towards investing more of myself in my actual (vs. virtual) life. Sure, I still send updates to Facebook and Twitter from my phone, and I'll skim over people's updates and comment here and there, but it's a far cry from my previous involvement.


I used to see my every possible action as a continually shifting series of complexly nested If-Then statements to a degree that might well have given Hari Seldon a headache. Every nuance of choice and interaction opened up a completely different possible future.

Lately, though, I've been feeling kind of overwhelmed by my life. There are so many factors beyond my control that, even if I acknowledge and accept that lack of control, trying to account for so many permutations of possibility has become paralytic.

*****

One of the very, very few blogs I make an effort to read regularly is by a Presbyterian minister named MaryAnn McKibben Dana. For whatever reason, she addresses numerous issues that resonate deeply with what I am personally struggling with and/or striving for. Among other things, she is currently writing a book about the value of deliberately observing Sabbath in our lives, and I have been working so hard to catch up with my never-ending To Do list, that I need the reminders that it is necessary to also allow one's self to Be.

But there is one entry which keeps coming back to me, a poem about the fallacy of the need to draw a line in the sand.

It's not about the future.
It's not about What If.
It's not about the weight of the world.
It's about now.

When faced with a choice, any choice, of an action, my mantra has become, "In this moment..." That simple phrase brings me back to the present and connects me with my life. And I have been finding that, when I am present and connected with life, I instinctively choose that which creates, moment by chosen moment, a path of love.