learning to walk

One by one, I remember as if it were today, the small hands of my toddler children wrapped with urgency around my index fingers as the business of walking was addressed. There was nothing good or noble or altruistic or wise in it. It was just the course of events ... delightful to my children, delightful to me. What was new was new and we both enjoyed the woo-hoo of newness... as we practiced and inched closer and closer and closer to the moment when no support system, no index fingers, was required.

And this morning, I felt some of that same delight when I got an email from a guy I worked with before I retired in 2009. He was interested in meditation and "I thought of you."

The delight did not come from the notion that I could sell Tom some particular bill of goods ... that I could, without admitting it openly, rope in a disciple or an acolyte or a convert or a paying customer and sell him on Zen or Buddhism or something similar. As I might implicitly have said to my children, so I was delighted to say to Tom, "Meditation (like walking) is a good idea but it's up to you and there is no moral mandate in it."

I've had enough contact with enough people who claim a "sincere interest" in meditation and then take no action ... enough so that hope was not a part of this morning's delight.

It was just a small delight -- like the moment when a juicy green grape explodes in the mouth:

Hot damn! Index fingers -- how wonderful!