The present of the moment

During my walk in Rang Hill this morning I realized that a phrase that I had been mentally repeating for many years shifted in meaning. As a young teenager I read the novel The Gift from the Star, which is full of inspiring ideas including this phrase “Trying to be everywhere equals being nowhere”. I always thought it meant that if I divided myself it would be really hard to be fully present at any given place. Yet while I walked early this morning, breathing the air still fresh after a storm, under a shower of white flowers and listening to the monks humming from the temple down the hill, I felt totally present and thought “Being in one place equals not being everywhere else”.

That is what has been bothering me for such a long time. Not that I did not love the present moments but that I could not divide myself and live each life that I wanted to live. Right now, I would like to be in DC, having chaipuccinos on a coach at Tryst, doing acroyoga at Meridian Hill Park, taking dance classes, riding my bike in the unending paths, going to yoga classes with my favorite teacher. I would also like to be in Argentina, drinking mate with my friends, going for walks with my mom, visiting my sweet grandparents, hanging out with my siblings. Another part of me wishes that I was fearlessly traveling the world. And yet another begs to be free to enjoy the moment, this magic island, the job in which I have gotten the most love ever, the eternal summer.

In the last weeks I have been asked many times when I am coming back. I am not sure. Coming back where? Where is the real me at one given time?