It’s sunrise in Yosemite Valley.  A family of mule deer is grazing just a few feet from my camp chair alongside the Merced River.  Majestic cliffs rise in every direction, the granite still seeming to glow with last night’s full moonlight.  I’m thinking, “Life is perfect.  This is what it’s all about.  This is what’s real.”

It took three days before I could settle into this moment of peaceful appreciation for our beautiful world, for my beautiful life.  Three days of vacation before my mind settled down enough for a decent night’s sleep.  Three days before I could stop thinking and rethinking everything I’d tried to take care of before going out of town and worrying about everything I would need to do upon returning home.  This is messed up.

Of course, it’s great to be able to take a break from our usual routine sometimes, to look at everything from a different angle.  Travis and I keep busy schedules, and often it’s only when we go out of town that we allow ourselves to really unwind.  We may get away from what’s inessential, away from distractions and drama.  Sometimes this is what empowers and inspires us back into a groove of authenticity and soul. 

But still it seems like there’s something fundamentally twisted about having to “get away from it all” in order to experience what’s real and true about it all.  I mean, what is this ALL we think we can get away from?  And where do we think IT ALL isn’t?  The idea doesn’t even make sense.

Because the thing is: IT ALL is always here and now.  For each of us, IT ALL is our whole life, our whole world.  It’s all our relationships with it and in it.  It’s us.

There’s no getting away, really.  There’s only getting more into, more with, more as…

Here we are, world:  the fullness of life showing up as you as the uniqueness of you and me and us together.  Here we are, all together now.

XO, Drew

© 2018 Drew Groves