Looking back to help me move Forward

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Hi Everyone 👋

This morning I came across this sentence by Thich Nhat Hanh in a blog post I made some years ago after my out-of-body death experience....

"The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart",

And my first thought wasn't "Wow, how beautiful." It was....

I had no idea what that actually meant until I wasn't in my body to feel it.

Before this, I'd have told you my heart was open.

I'd have told you I love freely,

I smile through the rough patches,

I'm a generally happy guy.

And I wasn't lying.

I was happy, mostly.

But there's a difference between a window you've cracked for fresh air and a window you've taken clean off the hinges. The cracked one still filters the world. The missing one lets everything in, the good, the garbage, the leaf that smacks you in the face.

Here's what I used to think freedom was.....

Having enough love to give,

having good relationships,

not letting the bad days drag me under.

That's not nothing.

But it's still managed freedom.

It's freedom within a container.

What I saw in that ambulance, from wherever that was, wasn't a glowing version of me with a name tag. It wasn't "Mark the husband,

Mark the writer,

Mark with the stuff to do."

It was just awareness.

Bare.

Watching.

Completely unbothered by whether those heart compressions worked or not.

And that told me more about non-attachment than any meditation cushion ever did.

Because nothing in that moment needed to be fixed.

Not even my own body.

So now,

I'm not sitting here with answers.

I'm sitting here with coffee.

And I mean actually sitting with it......watching the steam peel off the surface, pulling me into the smell before I even take a sip.

I'm watching mt dog brush past my legs like I'm just another piece of furniture, which is exactly the right amount of importance I should have right now. I'm watching the leaves outside let go without negotiation—yellow, brown, a little green still clinging, and the wind doesn't ask permission.

That's the freedom Thich Nhat Hanh was pointing at. It's not in the grand openness of your heart. It's in the release of the grip. It's in the willingness to let this exact second- car horns, dog fur, steam, voices from another room- be enough without you having to add one single adjective to it.

I don't know if what floated above that ambulance was my "soul" with a destination. Labels feel wrong now. It was just... paying attention. Without any skin on.

We spend so much time hunting happiness like it's a lost set of keys. We attach dollar signs to it, attach milestones to it, attach other people's approval to it. And then we shuffle through life vaguely content, vaguely stressed, never quite clocking that the whole thing could be unplugged in a heartbeat.

I'm not going to tell you to live your best life.

That phrase is dead on arrival.

I'm going to tell you something narrower....

Put the damn phone down and just watch the stream of life for a minute.

Not because it's profound.

Because it's here.

And you're not.

That's the whole practice, isn't it?

Letting this be enough.

With love ❤️

Always

Mark