My path is sweet on either side

All through the dragging day

“...vowing Only until there's nothing more I want–thinking it, wrongly, a thing attainable, any real end to wanting, and that it is close, and that it is likely, how will you not this time catch hold of it…”

~Carl Phillips, A Kind of Meadow

When I was a child of nine years with mousey-brown hair and knobbly knees, I played a game I wouldn't tell anyone about for many years. Lying prone across my bed with my eyes squeezed tightly closed, I would imagine with all my senses that I was a ragged street gamin, starving, cold, and bereft of any scrap of love.

Suddenly, I woke in a haze of wonder. I'm warm! Where did these clothes come from? Where am I? Just look at this cosy bed! With blankets and a real pillow! And what are these, on this shelf? Books—real ones!—and somehow, my name is printed inside them! What's behind this little door? Ahhhh, more clothing, and shoes, and a warm coat! And whence this delicious smell? (I really talked that way, due to reading old books.)

The delicious scent would draw my feet down the stairs and to the supper table, still playing my Thankful Game on the inside. I have a family of my very own?! A father and mother, sisters and brothers, and even a rosy-cheeked baby! There's a place at the table for me?? And look at the steam curling from under the edges of the pot! Hot, nourishing food! I won't need to starve ever again! I could keep it up indefinitely.

If my family had known about my game, they would have mocked me as a goody two-shoes, as I doubtless was. But it made me feel warm and bright inside my life, so I kept it as my secret.

“Hop in,” said my friend, throwing open the door to her new black Cadillac. I slid into the back seat and clicked my seatbelt. The familiar motion did nothing to lessen the strangeness I felt as the scent of the car’s interior hit my brain. So this is how it feels to be rich, I thought, abashed. At seventeen, I knew better than to speak those thoughts aloud.

I was staying with an elderly retired missionary woman while her husband visited the African country where the couple had preached the gospel and raised a family. She needed a Scrabble companion and some help with household tasks and putting her compression stockings on each morning.

Her daughter was driving the two of us to the grocery store. As mother and daughter chatted in the front of the Cadillac, I viewed the world from my seat of unaccustomed privilege. Discomfiting feelings coursed through me, coalescing in one startling awareness. I feel superior. I feel superior to the people outside my window who are driving lesser cars. I feel superior to everyone in the world who drives a lesser car. I feel superior to the person I was before climbing into this car.

Immediate revulsion.

Then the determination that has stayed with me: I refuse to feel superior to those who have less.

Two years ago, my second partner and I backpacked for a couple of nights on the Appalachian Trail. Just as the sun was setting on our first day of hiking, we reached a popular overlook, and she decided we would camp right there.

The next morning, we overslept and were still packing up when other hikers began to approach the overlook.

We heard them chattering before we saw them. “D’you think this is it? This has gotta be it!” They rounded the corner, saw our partially-disassembled encampment, and hesitated.

My partner didn't hesitate. “Do you mind?” she challenged them, her posture both defensive and offensive. She gestured at our shorts and tanks, “We’d like a little privacy here!”

They left in haste, apologizing and casting regretful glances over their shoulders at the overlook.

I was too stunned to speak until we heard the voices of the next group of hikers approaching. She sighed loudly and began complaining to me, “I think we deserve a little more courtesy than this,” but before she had a chance to accost them, I appealed to her, “Put yourself in their shoes. They woke early and worked hard to reach this view, only to find it guarded by a pair of wild-haired, half-dressed harridans? How is it their fault that we don't have our shit together?”

“I guess you're right,” she admitted. “I wasn't thinking.”

This spring, I took my youngest son to watch the sun set over the Susquehanna River. Nate is the thirteenth nine-year-old I have mothered.

We made our way down the trail and across the boulders toward the overlook spot. “Ah, there's a young couple out there, and see? Others awaiting their turn. Let’s sit back here and eat our snacks while we wait,” I suggested.

Ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes passed, and the young couple seemed oblivious as other visitors came, waited, and left again, not having had a turn at the unobstructed view of the vista.

I wasn't bothered. I felt soft toward the couple, who were wrapped up in the magic of each other and their surroundings. But could there be a more perfect opening? “When you're an adult, Nate, do you think this evening will come back to remind you that public spaces are shared spaces?”

We left after an hour or so, the sunset fading from the sky and the young couple still on the overlook boulder.

Mm, what'd you say?

Mm, that you only meant well

Well of course you did

Mm, what'd you say?

Mm, that it's all for the best

Of course it is

Mm, what'd you say?

Mm, that it's just what we need

You decided this

~from the song Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

We have the ability to learn to live differently.

What’s the remedy for entitlement, this sense that the world owes me and I have every right to take what I want?

I don't know about you, but gratitude has been the theme wending its way through my life. No matter the bridges, counter-melodies, and variations, the piece always finds its way back to the main motif.

Whatever it is, I don't need to own it to be rich in it. I don't need to experience it myself to receive enjoyment from it.

Exuberance with my friends when they find their loves.

Admiring the possessions and privileges of others without the compulsion to obtain the same for myself.

Hosting a crowd of people then stepping back and basking in the goodness passing between them.

Soaking in the bliss of a concert crowd even when the music isn't familiar to me.

What if I relinquished my desire to own and dominate?

What if I kept my heart open to receiving life as a gift? To living in the beauty to be found in that moment?

Do you know that when I go to the forest, the hills, the lakes and streams, not once have I gone in order to take photos? The world I inhabit is enchanting. I go to her because she delights my soul with her beguilements. Sometimes she invites me, “Come closer. Look more deeply,” and offers up her beauty without holding back. When I accept her offer, does her beauty then belong to me? Do I have the right to keep it to myself? Why would I want to, when to share it is to multiply the pleasure?

What if I were to hold these gifts with open hands? What if I'm truly richest when I have something good to give? What if the most buoyant joy comes from open hands?

What if I opened my heart and my hands again and again, until openness was my way of being?

Who could demand that magic happen at all, let alone for oneself? It's enough for me to know that magic happens, that magic has happened even once since the beginning of time.

This is how I came to be teary-eyed not long ago, standing in line for coffee after church, soaking in the warmth that suffused the roomful of people and the gentle patter of their conversation. Grateful tears sprang to my eyes as the realization washed through me, In this place, I don't need to perform or prove or protect myself in order to be loved.

And I get to be fully alive and fully aware for one magical moment of such a world.

Playing as I hit the publish button: Child of the Stars, written by Dustan Townsend for the band Fish in a Birdcage.

Title and subtitle are from the last stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, Journey:

Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side

All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot

And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs—

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,

And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,

The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,

Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road;

A gateless garden, and an open path;

My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.