Ruminating

I've had a Rumi quote taped first to my kitchen wall and then to my office wall for more years than I can remember: 

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

For years his words landed with me as a re-minder to have my prayers be my practices. I got the gratitude part, but I knew I was missing something. 

Tonight in a moment of otherwise unremarkable ceiling-gazing, the meaning of the quote slipped into focus. 

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

It has been easy for me to know what needs to be done - pay bills, fix squeaky wheels, answer emails, vote, feed the cats - but I have been dragging around this idea that there is Something Significant I am supposed to do with my life, to make my life worthwhile and to have my time on the planet amount to Something. Significant.

And I have been counting on some powerful feeling or sign from the Universe to tell me The Thing.

As if. As if there was only one big Something. And I would know what it is. And I have to do it, and when I do it my life will have Turned Out.

I've been trying to do The Right Thing for The Right Reasons in The Right Order and in Good Time.

Ridiculous.

There is so much love, so much that moves me, so much unruly potential. So much possible. 

I've just been worrying about getting it wrong, missing the window. Like that scene in I Love Lucy when Lucy and Ethel work at the chocolate factory. They set out to wrap individual pieces of chocolate candy in paper as they move down a conveyor belt, but the belt runs fast, their timing is off, they wind up shoving candy hand to mouth rather than let a piece slip by unwrapped - there's candy flying everywhere and it is mayhem.

Lucy says to Ethel, "I think we're fighting a losing game!"

Ethel can't say anything, because her mouth is full of chocolate. You couldn't hear her anyway, because the audience is laughing loudly at the spectacle of these women being overwhelmed by having so much chocolate in such a short span of time.

Sometimes life is like a box of chocolates, and those chocolates are flying past you faster than you can neatly wrap them for public consumption.

I want to work my best, side by side with people I am proud to call "friend," shove chocolates in my mouth, laugh with the glee of freedom, and marvel that there are so many opportunities that some slip by untouched. 

I am going to pursue what calls to me and watch the results shake out in their own good time, worry less about doing in the right order, the right time frame, or whether I get to do it all - because there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.