Showing up

All this week, I’ve still been feeling the blog-blahs I’ve previously described: when I think of something to share, I can’t find time to blog it, and when I find a spare moment to write, I can’t think of anything to share. A typical writing conundrum.

Last night, J and I went to see the New England Revolution play the Chicago Fire at Gillette Stadium, and as always we each took hundreds of pictures. Afterward, I came home, duly copied mine to yesterday’s photo folder, took a quick look at what I’d shot, and turned off my laptop, saving for some hypothetical rainy day another folder of photos that probably will lie neglected on my hard-drive. Someday, sometime, I’d like to sort the photographic wheat from chaff, post the best to Flickr, and post the bloggable…or not. At this point I have an oceanic backlog of photos from three Red Sox games in California this spring, a handful of Boston Cannons lacrosse games this summer, and all the silly random photos I snap from day to day, uncertain when (if ever) I’ll ever get around to re-visiting much less sharing them.

I have no idea when (if ever) I’ll get around to sorting through much less sharing the rest of last night’s soccer photos…but in the meantime, here are two shots of camera-wielding fans I particularly like. This morning I gave consulting interviews at the Zen Center, and one thing I find myself emphasizing time and again to the folks who ask me questions is the importance of simply showing up. Most of the questions people ask me have to do with struggles they’ve been having in their life or practice because they have some idea of how they should or want to be. Across the board, the people I meet in or out of the Zen Center interview room (and I count myself in this number) want to be calmer, healthier, more balanced, sweeter, skinnier, wealthier, smarter, or whatever: more of this, and less of that. And this very thought that “I’m not X enough” or “I’m much too Y” is exactly what keeps you, me, or any of the folks I encounter from realizing that everything, already, is pretty much okay as it is.

And so this morning, I found myself insisting time and again that Zen, life, and everything else isn’t about getting things right, perfect, or “good enough.” Zen, life, and everything else is ultimately about showing up, trying your best, and accepting that as “enough.” Just show up, I hear myself saying again and again, and see what happens. So here I am on a Sunday afternoon, just showing up with the same old blog-blahs and seeing what happens when I toss a couple paragraphs and pictures together: enough?