Arriving At Your Own Door

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from Coming to Our Senses
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott, "Love after Love"
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Every moment we are arriving at our own door.  Every moment we could open it.  In every moment, we might love again the stranger who was ourself, who knows us, as the poem says, by heart.  We already know ourselves by heart in every sense of the word, but we may have forgotten that we do.  Arriving at our own door is all in the remembering, the re-membering, the reclaiming of that which we already are and have too long ignored, having been carried, seemingly, farther and farther from home, yet at the same time, never farther than this breath and this moment.  Can we wake up?  Can we come to our senses?  Can we be the knowing, and at the same time keep don't know mind and honor the not-knowing?  Are they even different?

The time will come, the poet affirms.  Yes, the time will come, but do we want it to be on our deathbeds when we wake up to who and what we actually are, as Thoreau foresaw could so easily happen?  Or can that time be this time, be right now, where we are, as we are?

The time will come, yes, but only if we give ourselves over to waking up, to coming to our senses, and going beyond our own underdeveloped minds.  Only if we can perceive the chains of our robotic conditioning, especially our emotional conditioning, and our view of who we think we are - peel our own image from the mirror - and in the perceiving, in seeing what is here to be seen, hearing what is here to be heard, watch the chains dissolve in the seeing, in the hearing, so we rotate back into our larger original beauty, as we greet ourselves arriving at our own door, as we love again the stranger who was ourself. We can.  We can.  We will.  We will.  For what else, ultimately, is there for us to do?

How else, ultimately, are we to be free?

How else, ultimately, can we be who we already are?

And when, oh when, oh when is the moment this will happen?  "The time will come..." the poet says.  Perhaps it already has.

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I learned as a child not to trust in my body
I've carried that burden through my life
But there's a day when we all have to be pried loose.
If this were the last night of the world, what would I do?
- Bruce Cockburn
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