To Find a Steady Center: Yehunda Amichai

From the place where we are right 

Flowers will never grow

In the spring.

The place where we are right 

Is hard and trampled

Like a yard.

But doubt and loves

Dig up the world 

Like a mole, a plow

And a whisper will be heard in the place

Where the ruined

House once stood. 

    -The Place Where We Are Right by Yehuda Amichai from How Lovely the Ruins

I have been both surprised and not at how vehemently people have doubled down on shifting information. We are funny creatures, humans in the internet age. We seem to cling to certainty with a vicious grasp the more uncertain things become around us. Our need to be certain when not much really ever is has hardened us to learning new things, to hearing one another and being open to new information and experiences. Much is changing and likely much will continue to change even after this time.  

Today I am taking a deep breath, I am exhaling and I am acknowledging that I cannot know it all with certainty. I will practice being informed by not anxiously collecting information to create certainty I cannot hold. 

I am hoping that in this breathing and boundaries around information I can leave the ground less trampled, softer to plant seeds and see something good, maybe flowers, spring up in me and you in this time. 

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing.