The journey is the destination.

Who said "Life is what's happening while we're busy making plans"? Geez, we worry about the future, we obsess on regrets for past actions, and we forget that we're right here, right now, and this is it. Are we ever really here?

Facing reality is probably life's biggest challenge. We can balance our checkbook and add up our financial worth, we can count the number of our friends, we can visually see our belongings, but are we ever really in the moment? What makes that so very difficult? If we really, really face who we are it might be painful, we might see things that are not so pretty, and we might not like what we see. So we keep busy, going to clubs and on dates with strangers, shopping 'til we drop, using chemicals or food to blur our senses, and find more and more ways to avoid seeing what's in front of our face. Us.

I've been reading online singles ads for years, sometimes meeting men and sometimes not, but reading them. And when I do talk to or meet some of the guys, I'm astonished at how different they are from their profiles. They may say they're funny or charming or sensitive and they turn out to be cynical or callous or mean. They even lie about the obvious, such as height, weight, and age - don't they realize that the truth is so obvious? So I think that maybe we just don't see ourselves as we really are, both our flaws and our fabulousness, that it might be just easier on our emotions to just pretend we are something we are not.

So what prompted this rant about reality? I bumped into an old boyfriend this week, someone I loved and adored and was so glad I had met. A sweet, funny, dear man who sometimes brought me great joy and sometimes I just wanted to kill him. Me, the pacifist. He looked good and seemed happy, although he did stutter a bit when trying to talk to me. I don't think love dies. I think we just keep loving someone forever, even if we grew to dislike them or if they harmed us. Maybe it's physics, that matter may change but never ceases to exist. But then I digress.

I occasionally think of him, this man with whom I had such a passionate and short-lived affair a few years ago, how I still sometimes wish it had worked out, how I still wonder how he went from such a sweet and thoughtful guy to one who would take something good that I did and turn it into something bad, like we had seen different movies in the same room on the same VCR. He was full of life and full of self-hatred, full of joy and full of pain, full of hope and full of regret. But did he really see himself as he is? Did he talk about our love affair and realize his role in its failure? Did he go on to love other women and do well or make the same mistakes? Did he heal and become more whole, able to love selflessly and fully? Did I?

How did I start this? Oh yeah, saying that life is right now, what's happening when we are thinking about something else. So how is my life today? Good, thank you. I'm enjoying the company of my women friends immensely, I'm finding pleasure in solitude, and I'm constantly finding my breath being taken away by each word uttered by my grandbabies. I'm delighted that my kind and beautiful curly-haired daughter is more wise with each day and seems to have found ways to make her life rich and full. I'm back to feeling strong at work. I'm healthy.

I want to live fully in the moment and a new and very wise friend suggested that this blog is helpful in that quest, since I must be fully present in each of my experiences in order to write about it. So why did I write this particular post. Not so sure, maybe just to remind you to try to see life for what it really is. And to see yourself as you really are. Flawed and beautiful, wise and growing more so, full of love to give away. Right now.