A few miles from our home is a highway that leads to a retail area with practically everything we need. It’s easy. It’s also frenetic. I’ve yet to drive on that road without cars and big-ass trucks cutting me off and tail-gating so closely they could easily connect to my bumper with a zip tie. Taking that route I’d be agitated by the time I arrived in town. Thankfully there is another way.

Running parallel to the fast-paced highway is a road that meanders through a ravine cut many years ago by the Little Spokane River. It takes longer to get where I’m going due to frequent braking for turkey and deer crossing the road. They are drawn there to munch on the lush greens along the river. I don’t mind. I’m accustomed to leaving margins of time for most every activity anyway. The important thing is that I arrive at my destination intact mentally and emotionally. 

Instead of stressing about avoiding unhinged drivers in fast moving traffic, when on this alternative route into town I am otherwise occupied. My thoughts meander like the twists and turns before me. 

The other morning while waiting for a rather large turkey family to cross the road I had a moment of insight. Pieces of my life formerly scattered around my mind like those of a jigsaw puzzle yet to find their place in the picture, found their spot. And, that took me back to early years.

I’m sure other’s had a different experience, but I hated school, especially elementary school. I was incarcerated in a room with 20 or more unruly, untrustworthy kids who gossiped, teased, and were mostly cruel. It smelled of library paste, urine, chalk dust, pencil shavings, and sweat. An older woman stood in front of us and droned on and on until we prisoners were released for gym, (code for getting hit with balls of all sizes) and eventually to go home. Why bother?

In those days I found as many ways as I possibly could to stay home. The most successful was to feign a stomach ache. This worked well with my perpetually depressed mother since I believe she herself often had stomach troubles. 

Once the school day began and it was too late to go anyway my heart took flight. I gathered, slowly to keep the ruse going, paper, scissors, tape, crayons, cotton balls, cardboard, and anything else that caught my fancy. As soon as I was established on the living room couch surrounded by everything I needed I went to work. 

My favorite things to create were various landscapes, lands of my imagination that held my heart together in urban metropolitan Chicago. One that took precedence over all others was what I called, ‘Lilac Land.’ On a sheet of cardboard I constructed rivers, hills, and trees with lilac bushes tucked in between. This conjured paradise was where I kept myself whole when all around me were rivers of asphalt, concrete and mountains of apartments and places of business.

The memory of those days played vividly in my thoughts as I waited for the turkeys to cross realizing that I haven’t changed all that much. I still create landscapes for the imagination, now with paint on canvas. I find the home of my heart in the quiet natural spaces where trees, birds, brush and wildflowers flourish far away from densely populated urban environments. 

As the last turkey crossed the road a chill ran up my spine. It occurred to me that I now live in Spokane dubbed, The Lilac City … On a small farm very much like that landscape of my dreams I created when I was so very young.

One might say, “So what? Coincidence.” That’s a point of view. Another could be Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity: coincidence which is meaningful. What we pay attention to and that which holds significance is deeply personal and as varied as the strands of our DNA.

I pay attention to something I have experienced as a flow of energy that has been running through all of my life. This mysterious companion has accompanied me throughout all of my often inept journeying as I attempted to realize the ‘implanted vision’ of my youth. A generative force like a river to renew, soothe and nourish the soul … A presence that met me at birth and I believe will remain until my death.

The closest I’ve ever come to an existing understanding of this enigmatic force is the ancient Chinese Taoist concept of the Tao … the ineffable source of all things … ’The Great Way’ through which all things move. 

Alan Cohen wrote of the Tao, “It is a mystery to the intellect but knowable to the heart. It is life itself.” I have known this mystery in my heart. As an American-born Westerner I simply think of it now as ‘The Presence.’ 

I never quite got over my dislike for the mandatory school years. High school was a living nightmare. It wasn’t until the very different experience of university that learning became desirable. I had choice and dove into what I wanted to study. 

We don’t get to choose where we are born, or the family we are born into. For many of us we simply find ways to survive with our hearts and souls mostly intact until we have means to make our unique way into the world. 

Most important is to keep pursuing our dreams no matter how many times we arrive at what appears to be a dead end … To continually reach for that which was planted in our tender souls when the world was young … To remain open to The Presence and cultivate patience.

How long does it take to realize a dream? As a Hasegawa Zen master said, “It may take you three minutes, it may take you thirty years. And I mean that.”