“There’s a way to get there from here.”

So said Sherry, a woman I worked with many years ago, whenever we were dealing with a problem in the office. It was always a positive spin on whatever the issue, and I took comfort in her cheerful comment. 

It can be immensely helpful to remember there is a way to get there from here when the way is cloudy, or clogged with lots of ideas and opinions, or the solution is uncertain. It can be a beacon of light when the way seems dark and foreboding. When we become stuck and can’t see the way forward. Take a moment to breathe, deep breath in and long, steady breath out, and quiet your mind. The way to get there will become evident, even if it looks different than you imagined.

I suspect many of you have similar memories of something someone in your life would share that shed a whole new perspective on what might have been a negative. 

A work colleague used to tell our students, “It’s a pretty flat pancake that doesn’t have two sides,” when he was mentoring them through a difference of opinion with another person. I remind myself of this when I am in danger of forgetting that we live in echo-chambers these days, mistakenly believing everyone thinks the same as us. 

It’s an idea that deserves more than a glancing thought when you consider that we live in a world that seems intent on pushing polar points of view, without any give or acknowledgement that there can be truth on both sides.

My father loved to quote Desiderata, a poem written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann. “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should” he would pronounce, whenever anything of significance (such as my engagement!) happened in the family. There was a measure of comfort in the words, that we were on the right track, that it would be okay. This poem was so significant in our family, this line is etched on our parents’ tombstone. I may not have liked what was unfolding, a life without them, but it helped me understand a truth. My father used to tell me that I would see him in the casket and now, as a parent myself, I understand the sentiment. My children will see me and that is the correct order of things – life unfolding as it should. I read the full poem at my older brother’s funeral service; he was the one who introduced us to the poem. 

“Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” I often recite these beginning lines of Ehrmann’s poem to myself, when I reflect on the world getting too loud, and I have been caught up in the whirlwind of maintaining my pace. A bicycle ride under a canopy of trees on a quiet rural trail is where I find I am reminded of this line.

I also remind myself when negative thoughts crowd in that I am “a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”  

Max Ehrmann came from a well-to-do family, was a practicing attorney, and worked in the family business before leaving it all at the age of 41 to devote full time to writing. I admire that courage. In the Introduction to The Desiderata of Happiness, a collection of philosophical poems by the author of Desiderata, Robert L. Bell wrote that Ehrmann was “deeply concerned with social problems, (a man) who deplored the exploitation of labour in his early-twentieth-century life.” Also, “Contemporaries told of him lying in the grass contemplating the sky – an early ‘flower child.’”

I like that. My heart beats to the tune of a hippie’s drum, a flower child, even if I don’t really carry off tye-dyed shirts, fringed vests, or flowers in my hair. The movement’s messages of love, peace, and living in community have always resonated with me.  

The premise of my blog is that I am “still” here, even as I enter the years that can feel like the final chapters of life. Ehrmann wrote in his famous poem, “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” I know there is another viewpoint that we should fight the ravages of time, but I think Ehrmann is recommending we make friends with this chapter of life and don’t waste time pining for what is past. Enjoy the now. Peace.

What phrases, quotes, or sayings help keep you on your path? I’d love to hear them. 

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If you are interested, here is a site that provides the full text of Desiderata: https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html