A POEM

As I walk Two Paths Side By Side...

Can one walk two paths side by side at the same time every day? Can one be in the present, engaged in the beauty of the mundane; the richness and value of daily life...work, hobbies, home and play, while at the same time always preparing, processing, and knowing about the time when things will inevitably change? 

One may think, how can someone walk two paths at the same time? Impossible! Folks with chronic medical conditions experience their attention on both paths everyday. Some may type all the while wondering when their sight will deteriorate. Others may run in the park with their children, feeling the cool breeze and laughing with delight, as their minds also keep in awareness a loss of movement that will eventually perpetrate. 

Will I be in pain? Will I be able to keep my memories? Will I speak? Will I walk? Will my hair fall out? Will my heart fail? Will I lose my sight? Will I need a transplant? Will I lose my mind? How will I die...? Questions always underlying the moments of living life. I am not incredulous. I know what is to come. I know. I know. I know not when? But it will come. 

Incredible to think of the strength it takes to make a meal, make a deal, take a shower, and live one's life, all the while walking on another path at the same time. One path of life, one path a frightening unknown. The mind walk's these two paths, but with courage can choose to let the body walk the one of living life. Right in this moment that is a choice that one can take. The future unknown but the present experience made. 

So strange the cycle that culminates. In health one path would be a gift; no fragility, deterioration to worry about--although this is a myth. With illness, if one is lucky, come two paths in mind--a gift; one of worsening state and one of stable physical strength. Remission aside, one path in illness would leave one to think that current experience is one of suffering. So if there are still two paths in mind but a body still in some capacities free, make meaning of the small daily things. In mind walk the paths side by side, but live each moment on the path that make you feel alive. All things go for all. Everything has its time. Walk the paths but you do not have to prematurely die within a living life. Walk the paths side by side. Both present, both alive.