Now and Again

I got nothin'. It's been almost a year into our lives alongside Covid-19 and I wish I could pull out a little nugget of wisdom like an unknowingly lost $20 bill found trapped in a deep fold of my jacket somewhere. Like, "Hey! There you are! I totally didn't even know I had this!" But nope. Nothin'. Just the inevitable chugging along through life, as we do.
I stopped making plans for 'when this reopens' or 'when we can travel again' or 'I can't wait for'. All I have is the proverbial unfolding of 'now'. And 'now'. And 'now'. Again and again and again.
I've written about 'now' before and I'm sure I'll write about 'now' again as 'now' is continually happening and unfolding until, well, at some point, I guess it stops?
But does it? Even though I've stopped making plans for 'later', 'now' still keeps rolling along, laughing at me as it goes by, saying in its wake, "Ok, see you 'later' then!"
"Damn you 'now'! Just stop for a second!"
To which 'now' responds, "Ok, here I am".
To which, I respond, "Well, not NOW!" And on and on we go.
That's the funny thing about 'now'. It's always there. And maybe because it's always there we take it for granted. That there'll be plenty of 'now' later to write that book, take that course, learn piano, even just to finally get that dust bunny that's been trapped underneath the dresser forever. 'Now' is continually beckoning us to meet it and...nah, later.

As a pretty great procrastinator, I always wonder, what is it about 'now' that's so difficult. Why not just do it 'now'? Why the deliberation? The debate? The excuses? Of course, to answer the 'whys' only further prevent me from doing anything 'now' whereby I can bypass it completely. (Not to say that the 'whys' don't have their time and place in some other 'now' but we can often get trapped in the continual uncovering of the 'why'; instead of just removing the dust bunny, we ponder the many reasons why it's there, how'd it get there, what kind of person am I to allow this to happen, and on and on we go.)

And then, in a not-so-distant 'now' somewhere in the future, whether it's due to cosmic influences, boredom, or whatever reason we have come up with for 'why', 'NOW' is the time. 'NOW' becomes the moment we decide to meet it. 'NOW' is when we decide to write a couple of paragraphs, look into that class schedule, pick up that dust bunny.
To which 'now' responds, "Finally!" and calls you in, even more deeply, into itself. "Come in!!! I've been waiting for you for forever! What took you so long??" Like a child running to show you all their toys, 'now' just opens up to reveal all its vastness (like the dust bunny, that, when you get on your knees and look under the dresser, shows off its whole family of dust bunnies living under there.)
So whether it's because the planets have aligned or the dust bunnies are ready to attack or you just feel that you can resist it no longer, 'now' is the time. 'Now' is always the time, whenever you're ready for it. However seemingly endless or narrowly brief, 'now' is always the moment. To begin. And to begin again. And now. And now. That is why the first word of the first of the yoga sutras is 'atha'- 'now'.

So don't worry if 'now' isn't quite your time. It will be.