Begin where you are....

Take a deep breath, feel the moist summer air fill your lungs, turn your head to the left and exhale, deeply, over your left shoulder. Blow all that trouble away. Now turn your head forward, breathe deeply, feel the air filter through your nose and fill your lungs, your chest rises and you pause in the space between, and then let the breath out. The inner calm supplants the panic and with each subsequent breath comes an infusion of clarity. Better now. Begin. Begin where you are. Don't worry about all that lead you to this point, the steps you've already taken on this journey, the journey begins again, here, now. You've traveled a great distance and come at last to the mighty river, but can not get across-- so you stop and build a raft, lashing together what ever you can find, whatever you have at hand, until finally you've constructed the raft you need to cross the river. Though the current may be swift and the crossing dangerous, you ford the mighty river and land on the other side. Now, ask your self, do I carry this fine raft with me? After all, it is built out of all that carried me to the other side of the river. I lashed it together and it carried me across so that now, I stand here, facing the path on this side of the river. No! Of course not. You leave the raft on the river bank and journey on. It has gotten you where you are. It's work is done. It would be such a burden to try to carry it with you. No, you leave it behind. You begin where you are, the journey continues, the journey starts here. It is not where the journey takes you, but the journey itself that matters.

As I face the job of completely revising the manuscript I have been working on for months, after getting some much needed (evidently) and very thorough review from my colleague, I groan and then feel grateful. Clearly it took them some significant effort to dissect my manuscript and I know how much it will thus be improved. So here, I begin again, where I am on this project. And in a greater sense, as I journey through my career, my research path came to a river which I could not cross, and so I have managed to get to the other side of that river. But my journey does not end here, no, it starts here. yes, it is like starting all over, and so I do. And getting this first important paper published with the help of my knowing colleagues, who do have the experience in my new field of study, will be my first step on this new path as I leave that raft behind. yes, breathe deep into relief. don't look back, don't look back.