Fireflies: what I learned by watching my thoughts worry by

I was sitting in the car, waiting for my daughter, a film student, to shoot some footage of a rainy carnival, which had appeared, as carnivals will, in the parking lot of our local mall.And there, as Katie pointed her camera at an empty ferris wheel, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before: my mind is filled  - FILLED - with absurd and random fears and concerns.Since I have so often said, "I don't worry," this caught me by surprise. Apparently, I do. But in a sneaky, worrying-when-I-am-not-paying-attention sort of way. As if a swarm of lightning bugs had been fluttering around my head in the dark and suddenly, in that moment of quiet reflection, they'd all started to glow!What the ...? I grabbed my journal and began writing. I didn't know why this was happening just then - and I didn't care. I was having a conversation with a part of myself I rarely saw (or allowed myself to see) and, fully engaged, I was listening.Here is what I caught in my 'firefly jar':

1. I was worrying that I will not have time time/money/energy to use my life at its fullest potential and that I will die unfulfilled and unfinished
2. I was worrying that even if I try, these projects I'm working on will turn out to have been fruitless, pointless, misguided and wrong
3. I was worrying that it's too late. that I should have perfected my body, face, mind, home, wardrobe, website, credentials/education, brand/message, diet by now.
4. I was worrying that I should know the exact combination of Superfoods, Smoothies and Supplements to guarantee immortality, glowing vitality and endless energy.
5. I was (also, weirdly) worrying that my daughter will be kidnapped and sold into the sex trafficking trade
6. I was worrying that my son would die and leave me with a hole in my heart that nothing will ever be able to fill
7. I was worrying that my husband would suddenly stop loving me just when I've finally figured out how to let myself love him
8. and that I would die, slowly and painfully, of grief.

Wow. I sat in the car, listening - respectfully, honestly -  to my own thoughts, capturing each lighting bug of worry as it flickered up and then faded back into shadow. And as I watched, I began to see patterns and all of a sudden, in my mind's eye, a word equation formed:

If...all of this worrying, all of this fantasy and future-tripping about what I could be/should be doing if only I had more time/money/authority/freedom takes me out of the present moment;and if...the present moment is the ONLY moment in which ANYTHING can happen.Then...I am not present AND none of it can happen.

I had glimpsed this truth before. I'd even taught it to other people. And yet, it wasn't that rainy day at the carnival that I'd understood it -  thoroughly, hauntingly.For more than 50 years, I've been missing in action. It was like being punched in the stomach.And I sat there, watching a freaky slide-show of myself:not doing my best in high school (because who'd notice?)quitting college in my last semester (because who'd care?)all the starting and stopping,and the jobs I did at half-effort while I waited to be discovered - or caught.I was half alive; half awake -  I wasn't making any choices. I wasn't adding or creating anything to the world. All I had to work with was whatever floated by - or was thrown at me - and all I could do with that was react to it. That day in the car, watching an empty ferris wheel spin in the rain, I saw the truth: Life wasn't coming for me. There was no secret opportunity vortex waiting for me to find it. It was right here. And all this time, while I was wishing I could write but not lifting the pen; wishing to be rich but spending my money so fast that it didn't have a chance to compound, wishing I could love but instead of simply loving, I was waiting for the people and conditions around me to change so that I could.After all, I didn't want to get trapped into loving the wrong person, living a life I didn't want, writing the wrong book, moving so fast that I hurt myself? I didn't want to, gasp, make a mistake?

• I hadn't been visualizing, I'd been hesitating.
• I wasn't waiting for the right moment, I was terrified.
• I wasn't trapped: I was free.

And suddenly, miraculously, as if a pair of gorgeous white wings had been strapped to my shoulders, I woke up. And I saw the message that had always been there - everywhere - plastered all over the walls of the world: 

1. You can bring your best self to the party, the project, the kitchen table - and not just when people are looking or being nice to you or paying you. You can bring your best self everywhere.
2. You can bring her because you want to, because YOU NEED TO. Because she is who you are.
3. You can do it right now. You don't have to wait til you're ready. Til you're not scared. Bring her. Now.
4. Be prepared to bring her. Keep the tank full. Have the map handy. You never know when opportunity will arrive.
5. Don't miss the boat (and having a bag packed makes it a lot easier to step onto the boat.)
6. If you miss the boat, charter another one. Or build one.

And also, there is no boat - you're the boat. Step onto the deck of yourself and sail.I've been here ever since - awake, aware. And, oh man, is it hard. Every day, I feel myself being tempted back to sleep, back to forgetting. But once you know something, you never un-know it. And those lightning bugs, they've been glowing in my consciousness ever since.From then on.I am here. This is it. Now.