Finding a "Reason to Believe"

Seen a man standin' over a dead dog,
by the highway in a ditch.
He's lookin' kinda puzzled,
pokin' that dog with a stick.
Got his car door flung open.
He's standin' out on Highway 31,
like if he stood there long enough,
that dog'd get up and run.

-from the song "Reason to Believe" by Bruce Springsteen

Lyrics from songs enter my head and become metaphors of life. The quoted lyric above, sings to many points encountered in living. How many times, having faced in disbelief occurrences in life, do you try to deny it, try and make the past return. Unravel what has happened by trying to weave together the memories that told your story...Your belief in what was real and that you may have loved. I know I have stood with both feet firmly planted in the past's slipstream. Puzzled, mired in memories, so confused by what had happened that I knew it could only be made right if I just believed hard enough in the past. I think the best I ever did was to fill the present with a whole lot of sad longing and emptiness. How I figured death must be like.

I have never successfully made "that dog'd get up and run"--no matter how hard I poked it--so now I am content to love the dog that was. And more importantly, look to embrace the puppy in the moment.

The Now Is A Superpower

When I walk up to a river to fish, I bring with me the past and the ability to see a future.
I know what water is from experiencing its moods. I know what a river is as I have seen them before. I know what it may hold under its surface from what I have pulled from water previously on the end of a fishing line. I remember which baits or lures will work and how they will flow in the draw of a particular current. Even if this is a totally new location, I can piece together from the past what is happening now in front of me.
But yet, I am totally existing in the moment at hand. Surrounded by the space around me. I have never been there before like now. What will happen is a total unknown, but if I act the way the past subconsciously reminds me to, I will have glimpsed into the future. I may catch a fish, snag a lure or fall in the water over my waders...All possibilities. All futures.

However it happens, that will soon be another memory to predict another future. That's the superpowers of being in the presence of now.