Two Worlds

Harvard Business School. I am walking up an incline, relaxed, tired, and glistening from the afternoon sun when I see a woman jogging toward me, wearing a t-shirt in Harvard colors with the big emblem across the front. She's jogging with a tense determination felt in every forced movement of her body. Harvard. Business. Thinking. Goals. Logic. Linear progression. I am lazily strolling up an incline, putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the breeze on my skin, the sun burning my back, the work of my quads. I am fully present and engaged. I am here. The woman is running, her eyes are focused, her face intense, her mind appears to be buried in the future. There has to be is a possibility that she sees me.

In this moment, I see the contrast with full clarity in full color. The mind versus the feeling. Thinking versus experiencing. Doing versus being. My beach experience feels so expansive, so big, it feels as if the day has added several hours onto itself. The mind is left to marvel at the enormity of it. I am light and open, welcoming and relaxed. I move toward my target slowly, aware of all things around, in comfort and serenity. Thinking. Goals. Logic. Linear progression. In that moment, these feel colorless. They cannot be a substitute for the richness of the present, which breathes with unpredictability and life itself.

She's running. I am in a saunter. Two opposing worlds moving toward and passing each other. What if, eventually, the two form an everlasting bond, and move us toward real exaltation? That would be the day the world sings.