Tempting to Read the Epilogue

I love stories, and I always want to know how they end. I feel like life (maybe my life) can seem to be "hurry up to get.....where?". These past few months, I've really tried to slow down and "be in the moment" (at least in Seattle, this an oft used phrase much like "sending it out to the universe". Ugh?). Being future-oriented is a hard habit to break. I'm plagued by questions such as: What will happen? When? How can I make it happen? Meanwhile, I lose the moment to anxiety or even dread.

Starting in high school, I fell for American Transcendentalists. As a tender teen, I was smitten with truth/beauty/nature. My mind would drift to Thoreau's Walden Pond and the quiet solitude filled by unorganized water, whispering willows' falling leaves, and reflections of abstract clouds. I like that nature is messy. We can be at our best when we are dirty; imperfections are raw beauty. They are real.

Although I can't pick a favorite poet, I loved the naturalism of Emerson. In my college application letter, I quoted his definition of success (to paraphrase: finding the good stuff, which isn't money or goods!). Today, I ran by this Emerson poem and it inspires me release my judgements of both waiting to bloom or be in full blossom. I'm thinking about this instant; those roses who are in my direct line of sight, the beauty under my feet:

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike.