Day 12. Being Where I am

“Be Where I Am” 6×6, oil on panel, framed

“Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.”
— Alice Walker

I do this thing a lot—I try to hurry the present moment along so I can get to whatever end goal it seems to exist for.

I have a hard time waiting for a pan to get hot before throwing in a chicken breast. I’ve applied varnish to paintings before they were dry enough to hold it, smearing perfectly fine images into oblivion. I often agonize over the two-minute timer on my toothbrush, playing mind games and hoping it will be over soon. I don’t want to be brushing my teeth—I want to be the person with clean teeth already.

All of this hurry feels like it’s in service of getting somewhere else. Some place where I can exist with ease and leisure. Some place where I can just be.

But I’m starting to think I can’t hustle my way into a life of ease. Always being in a hurry creates the unmistakable energy of a person who is always in a hurry. No matter where they arrive, they bring that urgency with them.

That’s where the bees come in.

Rather than busy, I think of them as curious. I’ve watched the way they flit from one bloom to the next and then back again. They don’t feel rushed so much as engaged—immersed in what’s right in front of them. I don’t know the science of it, but I imagine they get back to the queen when they get back to the queen.

In today’s painting, the bees hover around a figure whose eyes are closed in quiet contemplation. She isn’t striving or arriving. She’s present—much like the flowers surrounding her head.

And maybe that presence, built moment by moment, is the future I’m actually dreaming of.