Branch Points

Did you ever stop and think of how things might have turned out differently in your life had it not been for the remarkable confluence of unfathomable, minuscule, seemingly random events that so influence our lives and proffer momentous potential openings, as well as limitations? Had I (jkz) decided to go to lunch five minutes earlier or later than I did one December day, or had Myla not run into a friend and fallen into conversation in a particular nearby place, in all likelihood we would never have met. We wouldn’t have had the children we did or wound up living the lives we are now living. This points to something precious and mysterious about living itself that may be worth pondering.

Had things not unfolded the way they had, other things would no doubt have happened, and we would now be living other, very different lives. It would also have been a very different me, for the me that I am now is in large measure due to the texture of our relationship together over more than forty-five years, the children we have raised, our grandchildren, and our love for each other.

Life may be generic, but love and beauty are specific. The world continually calls us to celebrate those specifics, in the places where we truly belong and feel most deeply at home. It calls us to celebrate the children we have, the life that is ours to live if we can be here for it and awake to its texture and images and sounds, so that these intimate and always-present aspects of our lives are not merely confined to memories stored away with the photograph albums. Our present actualities are true blessings, and their emergence every day in their unique particulars is nothing short of miraculous.

This observation continually reminds me to hold the virtual “pregnancy” of each and every moment with great reverence and respect. It reminds me that its potential is always momentous, even if we cannot know or foresee the next moment until it arrives, and even if for the most part, so many of our moments seem at first blush only humdrum and bland, and each day seemingly more or less like the last. It is easy to miss the ways in which every moment contains the enormity of the entire universe and can be full of surprises and unthought-of possibilities. It is easy to forget that we can watch them unfold and that we are called to participate in their unfolding. Young children are native to this magical world, in which everything is fresh and new and possible.

Seeing each moment as a potential branch point can be an exceedingly useful way of looking at our lives as they unfold. If, in our own lives, we desire the future to be different in any way, as so often we do with great passion, whether it is to have a better relationship with a child, or make something new happen in our lives, the only time we ever get to act to make it so is the present. For isn’t the present actually the future? Isn’t today yesterday’s future? Here it is already. We have it now, right here.

Seeing the present in this way, we might ask ourselves, How is it? Are we at home here, in this actuality? In this, or any moment of our lives, do we actually know, feel, sense where we are and how we got to this place, to this moment?

The only way to know is to keep our eyes open, and that means all our senses. Even then, knowing may not mean knowing, but rather knowing that we don’t know, and yet persisting in keeping the question itself alive because it is interesting and we are curious, and however our lives are right now, they are unfolding now, in this moment. This truly is it.

We know that each moment unfolds out of the preceding one, which colors it in some way. The present moment has a momentum all its own. Our actions always have consequences. If we hope to learn anything, or grow, or express our feelings, or improve the quality of life in the future, this really is the only time we ever get to affect the course that the incessant stream of actions and consequences we think of as our lives follows. If we take responsibility for attending to the quality and the possibilities of this moment, whether with a child or by ourselves, the next moment will be affected by that awareness, and therefore different.

Mindfulness may thus provide openings that may not have been accessible even the moment before, because the mind is now seeing differently. These openings may have always been here as potential, but their actualizing frequently requires our wholehearted participation. So, when it is time to do the dishes, we do them in that way, with full presence of mind. And that opens up the next possibility. It is the same with everything.

The challenge is to see if we really can embody, fully, the life that is ours to live, with the children that are ours to nurture, right here, right now… and now, and now, and now, each moment, each day, and each night a new beginning, as we encounter and move through light and through darkness.