Walking Swiftly

The Iowa folk singer Greg Brown has a line in one of his songs: "The world ain’t what you think it is/It’s just what it is."

How different I am when I remember to let the world open itself to me rather than trying to dominate experience with preconceptions.

There’s something about having a new guide dog that puts me in mind of this quiet lesson.

We walk together and trust that we will mutually take care of each other. We do this in the expectation that what’s ahead will be more interesting and viable than anything we might have supposed.

That’s poetry. If you were to write an equation it would be:

Experience minus expectation equals progress plus bliss

I know. It’s not the sixties anymore. No one is supposed to talk about bliss.

But I’m all for it.

S.K.