Tidal

Long before I knew what the phrase really meant, I referred to myself as a “student of life”. Looking back now I must have sensed that I had a lot to learn. Nothing could have been more true.

I have had many lessons since I first used those words several decades ago, yet I am still the same student. I have accumulated much, lost many and thrown away more.

I see lessons as tidal, returning again and again and again until I learn to sway with the patterns of giving and gaining, love and loss, laughter and tears. When I take in something new, more follows. The universe is always giving.

Yet I am not only a student. I am the classroom as well, my body is where all my learning takes place. All of it. My body is the instrument of all instruments, sensing the cosmos in ways I cannot fully understand, informing me that there are mysteries. This sets into motion a need to know, my biological programming kicks into gear and I begin to grow anew.

So if I am the student and I am the classroom, who are the teachers?

You are. And you and you and you, and you. Everyone and everything that enters my sensory path alters me in some way. I am the instrument of the universe and every shift of energy no matter how nuanced and distant affects me. My challenge is first to recognize this is so and then to take in the immensity.

I am the very lessons I need.

My search is not misguided for it is mine.

The universe is my mirror.

I am responsible for my responses.