Beneath the Same Sun

On my desk, sits a key lime La Croix, ice cold and shining with condensation. Outside my window, beneath the breezy sway of maple leaves, the grass crisps to golden brown, thirsty for rain that does not come. In other places, like Libya, rain has come and come and refused to stop coming. It’s too much to take in—the loss and suffering, the death and devastation, the loveliness of leaves, the crunching sounds of dry grass under my feet, the cool pleasure of an icy drink, and you, reading this, allowing the words to mix and swirl into the vast world that lives inside your mind. How can all of this—and so much more—exist at once? Sometimes, it feels to me as if everything is happening all at once.

My mind can’t grasp the idea that time is non-linear. I can’t grasp it, and yet I feel it. In moments of stillness, I feel ‘past’ and ‘future’ mix and swirl into the vastness of now. I feel myself travel across time—not as a river to cruise down, but rather as a current to drop below—and suddenly, my ‘past’ self is right there beside me, crisp and golden, crunchy at times but doing her best. Or my ‘future’ self arrives, and I can’t see exactly what she looks like, but I can feel her compassion and love for me like a cool drink, sweeping away my sweat and worry. And I love her back, so I take the next small step into whatever hard, scary thing I’m working on, knowing it’s a step in her direction. I write another page, book another coaching client, query another agent. I send out this email, not knowing—and not needing to know—whether anyone else will understand what the hell I’m talking about. I can feel all of myself—all of my selves—standing with me. Not in a line. Not somewhere downstream. Right here, just below the surface of this jumpy, thought-packed, time-tethered mind.

The feeling that my past and future selves are all here right now is also the feeling that you and I are not separate. That the atoms in the silver maple outside my window may well have shared space with the atoms in your body or my body. That one of your atoms or one of my atoms may have once found itself bound together with an atom from the floodwaters in Libya, the cracked earth in Morrocco, the shaking shoulders of a parent in an earthquake of grief. We are all made of recycled matter and recycled energy, and we will be recycled again. (It’s happening now, with every exhale).

What an odd thing life is. That we must live our particular lives here on the surface, and all the while, this ocean laps beneath us, forgotten for hours or days or entire lifetimes. Some days, I choose to dive in. I slow my body, I still my mind, I open to awe, I let the boundaries dissolve. Other days, there is no choice in it. The ground simply disappears beneath me, and I’m in the water and must decide whether to flail or float.

Maybe you’re floating today. Maybe you’re flailing and thrashing. Maybe you’ve built a boat out of the particular circumstances of your life and are imagining that you can avoid getting wet. Maybe you’re perched on the stern, summoning the courage to dive. I’ve done all of these. I’ll do them all again.

What am I trying to say? I’m not sure. But I guess what I’m trying to evoke is this: the felt sense that you and I and all the beings of this world, along with all our pasts and futures, are right here, in this same ocean. We are oh so human and oh so caught up with our individual lives—and we are made of the same water, sprinkled with the same salt, mirrors beneath the same sun.

Thank you for being with me here.

In case you’ve missed it, my novel All Is Well is being released a bit at a time right here on Substack. You can read the first three episodes for free by following the links here—Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3. If you enjoy them or feel them speaking to that oceanic space within you, or you simply want to support my work, then I hope you’ll subscribe. You can learn more here or reply to this email with your questions.