"For the animal to be happy, it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man [sic] is hardly satisfied with this at all." – Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity.
What is "the lit angel we desire?" (to use David Whyte's phrase). How do we hold her close?
The truth was hard for me to absorb when I read Watt's book in college. We "hold" nothing. Instead, we experience love, beauty, boredom and pain as they flow through us, always moving.
This was confusing to me. What could be wise about insecurity? I was feeling plenty of anxiety and uncertainty as a college sophomore. I wanted to drive those "weak" feelings away and replace them with courage and elan. Insecurity seemed to me to be inconsistent with "cool.
Of course, Watts wanted to help us to learn how to accept the chaos of the world rather than to fight it. He wanted us to learn the costly lessons insecurity can teach. He wanted to remind us that angels may be eternal, but we are not.
Animals are clearly better able to stay "in the moment" more than are humans. We spend so many of our moments anticipating the future. If we are scheduled for surgery in a week, we are likely to fill that week with dread. The surgery creates pain for the full week instead of the actual period of the operation.
Caregivers, like the rest of us, know this. What humans can do that animals cannot is to make a decision to accept the daily uncertainties that are unavoidable. Instead of dreading any future event, we can choose to accept both the event and the period leading up to it.
Like so many important things, this idea is so much easier to write than to live. Yet, the more we accept uncertainty, the more it loses its ability to frighten us.
Moments cannot be trapped and held. That is one of the things that makes pleasure so precious. We cannot freeze notes of music because the very act of interrupting music's flow destroys its beauty. Even the beauty of a painting or a "still" photograph is fleeting because its beauty is a moving and changeable thing for each of us.
If we are truly to live Love, not fear, than this means never living fear in any moment. It means letting the music play through us.
The end of the shift will arrive. The end of the week will come just as will its sequel. Instead of spending our days yearning for their end, what if we let them flow through us? What if we chose to experience each moment fully, carrying with us the caregiver's light?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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