Every morning, I meet the spiritual woman I hope to be.
She wakes up early. She drinks her coffee in silence, journals for a while, meditates, says her prayers, and takes a few slow breaths before the day begins. Sometimes she even feels a little wiser than she did the day before. She is patient. Grounded. Peaceful. I really like her.
Then life wakes up.
My mother calls seven times in thirty minutes. My dentist appointment is cancelled and rescheduled. An email arrives that sends my nervous system into orbit. By 10 a.m., I’m searching for the woman who was so peaceful at 7:15.
Apparently, she only works mornings.
For a long time, I thought that meant I was failing at the whole spirituality thing. Surely, if I were doing it correctly, I wouldn’t lose my patience quite so easily. If meditation really worked, wouldn’t I stay calmer longer like throughout my day? If I journaled more, prayed harder, or breathed more deeply, shouldn’t I be able to glide through the day untouched by life’s upheavals?
Now I think those are the wrong questions.
Maybe the point of a morning practice isn’t to create a perfect day. Maybe it’s simply to remind us of where home, our center, is.
Because the truth is, I don’t stay centered. I lose my patience. I react before I remember to breathe. I forget every beautiful insight I wrote in my journal just a few hours earlier. And somewhere between the seventh phone call and reheating my coffee for the third time, I realize I’ve wandered away from myself.
That’s when I remember something important.
I don’t have to wait until tomorrow morning to begin again.
Maybe peace isn’t a permanent state. Maybe it’s simply remembering, over and over again, that I can return.
I can return at 10:17.
At 1:42.
At 4:55, standing in my kitchen wondering where that peaceful woman from sunrise disappeared to. I’ve decided she’s not unreliable. She just expects me to invite her back. Perhaps the real spiritual practice is not becoming a woman who never loses her center, but becoming a woman who knows her way back to herself.
Tomorrow morning I’ll meet that peaceful woman again. And sometime before lunch, I’ll probably lose her. But now I know she’ll be waiting for me whenever I’m ready to come home.
I know this, life isn’t lived on the meditation cushion. It’s lived in-between the interruptions, the changed plans, the ringing phones, the unexpected disappointments, and the beautiful, ordinary moments that make up a day.
And perhaps that’s Zen enough.
