Coming Down

Everything is already OK.

Everything is already OK.

Everything is already OK.

I tumble over these words in my mind like a river rushing over rocks as I walk the dirt path around the park near my home. I skim their surface but my mind is too fast, too unsteady to grasp their meaning. I turn the corner, veering off on the road that leads home and lose them again, charging on anxiously towards the unrealized future.

At home---my parents' home, to be exact---everything is not OK. I am an unemployed 26-year-old living at home without a "shtick." You know---that little, digestible spiel about who we are, where we're going and what we're about that we all serve up at holiday parties and family gatherings. These days, I am certifiably "shtick-less."

And reasonably so. For a year, I didn't need one. For a year, I was "Anna Alive," solo world traveler accountable to no one, tethered by nothing.

I settle in at the computer, trying to prioritize my ever-growing to-do list. My savings are dwindling, my options endless. And I haven't seen a dentist almost two years.

Somehow it was easier to be "free"---high-minded and philosophical in the ways I like to think I am---while wandering mountain-scapes in the Himalayas or meditating in Thai Buddhist temples than back here, navigating the low-cost healthcare marketplace.

I fling myself at the mountain for a while: shooting off job applications, looking over potential graduate programs, sifting through the encyclopedia of reading material my bank and healthcare provider sent me in my absence. Each peak reveals another valley to cross, another mountain looming on the other side.

By three o'clock, I'm weary and despondent, no further along than when I started. I feel the despair starting to close in.

So I stop, and I meditate. Because that is what I know to do. It is what I went to Asia to learn about. And it is the only thing that keeps me sane on this winding odyssey that I can't anticipate and can't prepare for and can't control.

I turn off the lights in the living room, grab a cushion, and settle myself cross-legged on the floor. My resolve isn't strong today so I turn to Tara Brach, one of my favorite meditation teachers, for help.

In a 20-minute, guided recording, Tara invites me to drop the to-do list for a while, set down my mentally-accumulated load. She takes my attention to the aliveness in my fingers and toes, the quiet spaciousness before my closed eyes.

And the dust starts to settle. Slowly, breath by breath, I sink down, down, out of my head-space and into a deep inner space that my mind doesn't know, can't understand. From this place, Tara draws a prayer:

May I be filled with loving presence, held in loving presence.

May I accept myself just as I am.

May I know the natural joy of being alive.

May I touch great and deep peace.

May I awaken and be free.

The words bring tears to my eyes. I repeat them again and again and, this time, they start to sink in, warming my being from within. And I remember...

Everything is already OK. No matter what I choose to do or not do. Everything was OK before I got here and everything will continue to be OK long after I'm gone. I'm here---only a short while---to witness this life, admire and appreciate it in all its diversity. Enjoy the ride.

I open my eyes and slowly start to uncross my legs. They have fallen asleep, so I stretch them out long on the floor in front of me and let them tingle and swirl with forgotten energy. I lean back, resting against the wall behind me. Outside, the afternoon sun is low, stretching its long, glowing fingers almost horizontally across the canyon, bathing everything it touches in a warm, golden light. I try to remember if it looked this way twenty minutes ago.

Downstairs, my mountain awaits, tall as ever, but I linger here, pulling up a chair on the patio to watch the sunset. Who knows, truly, how many more of these I will enjoy in my lifetime. Right now, I am alive, I am here, and everything is OK.