Being here is the journey

This weekend I went on a backcountry ski with Chema. I hadn’t been in a while, and it didn’t take long to feel tired.

I went through my normal affirmations—I am strong, I am willing for this to go well, We can do hard things (shoutout Glennon Doyle), but nothing took me out of my head for more than a minute.

I turned to noticing things, a favorite way to stay in presence—I see where snow has dripped off fir trees. I see last year’s coneflowers peeking through snow. I see a log that could harbor a chipmunk.

Eventually I found myself repeating, just be here. If you focus on being here, eventually here will become there. All you have to do is be here.

And it got me to the top, because I know it to be true. Being here in grief was how I eventually noticed a day when it lessened. Being here in the early part of this journey as a writer is all I can do.

I trust here. I trust that with enough days of being here, here will start to look different. If we rush through, we won’t notice the change. We won’t glean the lessons of here-ness. If we avoid here, we’re sure to remain stuck. But if we focus on just being here, one day without us realizing, our here has transformed.

Being here is the journey. Being here is the transformation.

May you be here.