June 15, 2023 – B

Looking back,
I see that all of my yes's and no's
were spot-on.

Even when I said yes to something
I should have said no to,
and no to something that should have been yes,
they were exactly proper and fitting
for what they led to 
and what happened next.

For instance,
I said yes to deer hunting
long past its appropriate-to-me-ness,
but it took every hunt
to cement me in the wrongness
of what I was doing,
and provided a quality of clarity
that would not have been there
if I had said no straight away.

My yes's and no's grew me up
to the extent that I have grown up,
and that is, after all,
what we are all about--
growing ourselves up
over the full course of our life.

If enlightenment doesn't do that for us
it is wasted on us
and we are no better for it
through all the years of fooling ourselves
into thinking we are all grown up now.
Which is exactly the problem
with all of the adults who crowd into
bars, and churches, and sporting events
throughout the world.

Thinking we are grown up
and enlightenened
when we don't have a rock's insight
into what is going on
and what needs to be done in response.

What is going on is the adventure
that is unfolding about us
in and through our yes's and no's,
and we are too dense to recognize
what is happening 
and what it has to do with us.

We are all in the middle 
of the story of our life,
and we are lost in news/sports/weather/opinion,
refusing to wake up
and see what's what
and what is being asked of us
and what we have to do with/about it all.

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