WHAT IS OUR OBSESSION WITH FOREVER?

So is this a new found calling for you?

For the last week, I have been fully immersed in a landscape design project here on the Big Island. I’ve been creating, building, and transforming a beautiful acre in anticipation of the arrival of the landowner’s family’s first visit from the Midwest. I have worked side by side with a caring and energetic master who has taught me so much about design, planting, layout, and vision.

A week ago, the land was mostly just grass and a raised bed garden. We have built a bamboo bridge lined with ironwood pine needles, installed solar lights, lined banana leaves with tropical flowers, planted raspberry trees, curry trees, beets, lettuce, aloe vera and much more.

On my way home after completing the job, I called a dear friend of mine in the UK, who has been working on farms for a decade now. I wanted to share my new found knowledge, my love for the land, and my pride in last week’s progress.

“So is this a new found calling for you?” my friend asked me.

To that question, my internal processing sounded something like this:

Could I see myself doing this for the REST of my life?

Experience plus pattern recognition are basically my guides in life.

Brian’s experience + pattern recognition looks something like this:

I dive deeply into an experience, learn along the way, try and process my feelings, thoughts, sensations in my body, and then analyze “what happened” during these experiences. Almost always, at some point later in life, whether a few days or years after, my body will remember something about these experiences, and have almost a deja vu that signals to me, “oh you’ve been here before.”

And then I can make a decision with this information.

So back to my friend’s question about if this is a new calling, and as I contemplate if I could do this for the rest of my life, I have an image pop into my head.

It was 8 years ago in San Francisco. I was in an El Salvadiorian restaurant in the Mission District eating a pupusa and sipping on horchata. I was with someone I cared about and she cared about going to church so we had just left Spanish mass. It was a cool night, we were in sweaters and scarves — the best kind of outfit. Nostalgia, good food, warm heart, crisp California air….the best kind of night.

And I felt it. I said it in my mind:

“We should do this every Sunday night.”

Boom — pattern. recognized.

This desire to make a good thing last forever.

And I remember catching myself 8 years ago, just like I did last night.

The lesson:

It doesn’t have to last forever for it to be meaningful. It doesn’t have to last forever to feel safe. It doesn’t have to last forever for us to give ourselves permission to enjoy it as if it will, or as if it won’t.

So, before I replied to my friend last night, I smiled a soul smile, took a breath, and said:

“Nah man.”

As I uttered those words out loud, the heart quietly whispered to me:

“Maybe you will do this forever. Or maybe you will do it only this week.”

Both felt eternal.