in absense of doing

i was sitting in an empty lot. astonished. allowing for this awful moment to consume me. allowing for the word to reclaim its proper use as the silence made me awe-full. the grass grew tall and offered no complaints as i leant my full body weight directly in its center. i spent an entire morning thinking of what to do in the afternoon and i caught myself in the act of desiring instead of appreciating what was. suddenly the empty lot i walked passed twice a day and never noticed was the perfect answer. all the days with mile long to do lists were not today. today i could sit in the grass and appreciate how a spider crawling on my foot no longer scared me. i could count mosquito bites and test myself to see how long before i scratched them. i could watch eastern cumulus and western nimbus merge together and make myself admire the blue all the more as it was stolen away by grey. on days when i met a certain person or accomplished a task or came to a new realization, i could always look back on those moments as special. now a days special seemed a curse word and i found all my previous distinctions embarrassingly inaccurate. how much more rare is a moment when we not only have nothing more to do than breath- but that we actually do. i become in utter awe of existence when i simply exist. i begin to question all the complicated notions i have of what my future might look like. formerly scenes of unprecedented success travel and love affairs, my mind now drifts else where. how many north americans dream of shaving their heads and sitting in tall grass to pray all day? how many of them make this dream come true? yet the one thing that has always been clear to me is my responsibility to serve. can i be of true service to others through long distance mountain top meditation? do monks use Skype? would it be taboo to visit home for Christmas? clearly my temporary eastern fantasy’s collide with my societal conditioning and the same debate ensues that my mind has watched play out for life times. how to bridge the modern and medieval, the east and the west, contentment and motivation. once the pen screeches to a halt i know there is only one solution and it is the same one that brought me here. i will lay back in the grass and let the answer of my being be answered by my present task. in the silence there is still us in the stillness there is peace. the grass becomes my mentor. day by day all it does is grow and grow and grow. i must accept that this simple mission is the perfect quest even for as complicated an organism as the one who lies within her lap and contemplates how far consciousness has carried her from plant matter, and if she can ever return