Roam where you want to: "Stick Navigation Chart” from the Marshall Islands

On being buffeted and on being rocked

Friend,

It’s been a week! Something beautiful and joyous happened, then something crappy, followed by a clarification that turned the crappy thing into something that’s actually pretty good. It’s been tough keeping my equilibrium, but through it all, I’ve dug into my practice of asking, “What is the truth of this moment?”

I wrote about this practice back in April, but that post was mainly focused on living with uncertainty. This week’s experience was a little different. It was less about the tension between the illusion of certainty and glare of uncertainty. Instead I was reminded of being at the beach in Montauk where I felt I was going to drown in 18” of water. Each time I pulled myself up, a wave crashed down on me. This time I was pummeled by waves of high joy and overwhelming fear. Both are kinds of delusions, of course—we just like the happy kind better. (That’s not to say the joy isn’t important or real, only that it comes with its own strange mirages that can also lead us astray.)

So I kept asking myself what is the truth of each moment?