timing is everything

Timing is everything.

Two days ago I was hiking when I attempted to step off the path to let another hiker pass. In an effort to avoid a patch of poison ivy, I took the wrong step and down I went. I thought someone was going to have to carry me home on a stretcher. It took me forty-five minutes to limp back to my car.

This isn't the first time I've fallen. I slipped on a rock in Yosemite last year, and I still have the scar to show for it. A few weeks later, I pulled my hamstring doing some gentle yoga. Of course, as soon as I could walk again, I was back on the trail where I slipped on some wet leaves and really did myself in...for, like, six weeks.

This week, I'm sitting around with my leg wrapped and elevated...while reading "Still Here" by Ram Dass. Little did I know, when I started reading this book last week, that he was writing about me.

What timing!

"Most of what makes a book 'good'

is that we are reading it

at the right moment for us."

~Alain de Botton~

In this book, he describes his own experience of aging with humor, grace, and wisdom. I needed to hear about the time he took a leap onto a stage where he was about to address an audience of thousands, but missed and ended up needing stitches instead. How he ended up impaled on a coral reef during an attempt to surf with his younger companions, and how he injured his shoulder helping with a construction project he didn't have the strength for. What it was like to suffer a stroke that left him disabled, helpless, and angry until he was able to embrace the fact that reality had changed for him as he aged.

As it is changing for me.

As it is for all of us.

"This is the paradox of what we call misfortune:

that so often what we most resist

bestows on our lives

the greatest, most unexpected blessings."

~Ram Dass~

I don't know why I decided to pick up this book last week, but it found its way into my life like most good things do. By chance. With exquisite timing. While I'm laid up with an injury that reminds me getting older isn't for sissies. Or, maybe it is. Maybe it's time to think about dusting off the rocker that has been collecting dust in the basement all these years. Maybe I should learn to knit. Perhaps aging has lessons to teach us if it could only catch up with us.

Sit. Stay. Heal.

I didn't plan to engage in book reviews when I launched this site, but when pure wisdom arrives unbidden at your door, I believe you should spread the word. This:

"Everything changes once

we identify with being the witness

to the story instead of

the actor in it."

~Ram Dass~

jan