Tara Brach

Well, if we're able to see the forks in the road, it means that there's a bit more of that witness or that presence there, which itself gives us choice.

If we can see what's happening, there's a little more of a sense of, oh, this will be helpful, this will be hurtful.

So yeah, I sense those moments also, especially when I'm a little bit slowed down.

You know, recently I was part of a kind of extended family group email and one person was sending these very triggering kind of messages and

My want was to respond personally by email and set them straight, you know?

Let him know he was being insensitive and blah, blah, blah.

And then there was that fork in the road.

And I realized that if I did that, but I didn't take the, instead of taking the time to talk, it actually would create more distance.

It would not reach him.

So for me in that fork of the road, choosing to love was to not send an email, setting them straight, but rather to create more space for a real conversation.

Yeah.

So...

If you think of the path as it's not going somewhere, it's arriving more fully in our awake heart, in presence, and living from that, our aspiration is remembering that that's what matters, that love matters, that truth matters, that presence matters.

The Zen teaching is that the most important thing is remembering the most important thing.

And we know, I mean, I think when I say that of a palliative caregiver who described working with thousands of people and the greatest regret being not living true to their heart, to what mattered most.

And I think of it in a very day-to-day way.

I mean, most of us can relate if we take a day, not a life, that we know love matters, we know presence matters, yet it's so easy to get caught in a trance where we're anxious and we're on our way somewhere else or distracted or losing ourself in the wormholes of YouTube or TikTok or addictive kind of behaviors.

I think of one woman

She was diagnosed with cancer, and she had one year to live.

And she had a one-year-old, and her mantra was, there's no time to rush.