Look at the Calendar, Not Your Watch

My birthday is swiftly approaching and I keep thinking about time. I’m pondering how things happen and when so it seemed only fitting to recycle this post from October 2018. I have yet to see the man mentioned in this post again, but it’s a nice story regardless. Enjoy.

This weekend I met someone formerly associated with my yoga and meditation group way back in the 70s when he lived in Atlanta. That may not seem especially remarkable, but it’s literally never happened to me before. I’ve met people who had some exposure to it, but not people who engaged with the practices and then drifted away.

My yoga and meditation group, while worldwide, is small and the chances of affiliation with it coming up in the first conversation with someone at a party is unlikely. I grin thinking about the encounter from this weekend because it reminds me the universe is not random and chaotic. There is an order and intelligence at play, of which I get glimpses sometimes.

I take comfort in believing order and intelligence reign because there are a lot of things going on in the world and my life that I don’t understand, that I wish were different. There are certain elected officials I wish weren’t in office. There are certain policies I wish were abolished. I wish my body reacted differently to certain foods. I wish I didn’t have certain ailments.

And when I spend all my time wishing things were different – while also working to change them – I get frustrated and feel like I’m beating my head against a brick wall. I easily succumb to despair. When life throws a little magic, a little synchronicity my way, hope flares up again and I’m reminded that perhaps I’m unable to see the whole picture. That I’m a character in a play that only knows her lines and not the lines of everyone else.

The other reason I appreciate the encounter from this weekend is the demonstration that things circle back. The man I met hasn’t been an active member of my group for nearly 50 years and now he might pick it up again. In my mind, if something doesn’t happen in the short term, it will never happen. I have big dreams and at the moment it seems like I’m veering away from them. I feel sad about that because these dreams are near and dear to my heart, but at the moment they aren’t feasible given my energy levels and my financial situation. Does that mean I give them up for good?

Intellectually, I understand the answer to that question is “no.” I see many models in society of people who accomplished things later in life, but emotionally, the answer feels like a “yes.” The more reminders I have that things circle back, that dreams can be delayed, the better.

My spiritual teacher says that “whatever happens in this universe of ours is nothing but an expression of Cosmic desire or Cosmic will … when a human desire and His desire coincide, then only does the human desire become fruitful, otherwise it is a sure failure.”

Sometimes when I want something to happen doesn’t match up to when the cosmos wants something to happen. Sometimes the soil isn’t fertile enough. Sometimes you plant something and the yield is pitiful, but after adding nutrients to the soil, the yield is plentiful. I’m reminded here the universe is playing a long game. My recovery mentor says, “You’re looking at your watch while Higher Power is looking at the calendar.” My part here is to have patience, trust, and faith in the timing of things.

I dream of a world where we remember the universe has a long-term plan while many of us only think in the short term. A world where we recognize if we’re not ready for something just yet, it will circle back to us if it’s meant to be. A world where we realize instead of looking at our watches, we should be looking at our calendars.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.