Getting here

In my third year of university, I took a course that changed my life. I’ve spoken about it on here before, it was on sacred space and it opened my eyes to the capacity for space to influence our perceptions of the world, and the worlds beyond our immediate comprehension. During this class, on one otherwise inconsequential day, my professor mentioned something I have yet to forget. She told us to consider the act of encountering. Now that I’m further removed from the university scene, I regret only writing down that single word, encountering. In hindsight, it would’ve been nice to remember exactly what she had meant, but I digress.

So then encountering, I inferred, is a term for approaching. What you arrive at becomes its own practice. To encounter is the verb which means we’re on our way, it’s the process on our way to arrival. Despite having absolutely zero clue what my professor was implying, I imagine encountering as a form of embodiment.

To arrive, I believe, is the active embodiment of our being. Encountering would be the moments leading up to that. It’s where we begin to develop even the slightest suspicion that this moment is worth arriving at fully.

I like the word encounter because it has the component of surprise, where we unexpectedly begin this process of arrival. We are struck by the immediate curiosity of this abstract landscape. We’ve stumbled upon something; we have a sense of unseen significance.

So, encountering in this sort of metaphysical plane is then characterized first by its unexpected nature and then by the subsequent reaction of curiosity or perhaps even awe. We’ve begun a process of remembering to arrive, to finish the transition from our internal worlds to the here and now.

Then we arrive. We’ve entered a space, one that is not made remarkable by monuments or landmarks but instead by its overlay in physical space, and it’s access is determined solely by being in the correct tense, in the correct time.

Some religions view arrival as the moment of approaching the divine. I think it could be visualized by something like the moment you pick up a friend. I am here, you would say. Maybe that’s the same thing.

If I arrive, I have entered the space that I have hoped for. The destination, the journey’s end. For this journey, for this moment. I believe our lives are marked in part by this consistent journey through time, we arrive, we leave. Both can be as intentional as the other.

Thich Nhat Hanh said that arrival is the address of life. He called it the intersection of the here and now. If we visualize this, the streets, the sidewalks, we can visualize our call to approach, that encountering. We can also imagine our arrival. That moment, that hard exhale marking our relief. The walk was arduous but lovely, we’re finally here.

This visualization is relatively stretched by its length of time, but not of its significance. Encountering is brief, sometimes only fractions of a second. Arrival is longer; we can stay for as long as the moment will have us. But still, this is where life is lived and where we are aware of our living it.

To arrive, to walk our attention to that intersection, I can nearly see it in my mind. Through the art of encountering, we begin this conscious effort to move toward our lives despite our tendency to wander from it. Don’t get me wrong, wandering is fun, but to arrive is far more intentional. This is where we are met with the moment, the space, the feeling. To arrive is to show up, to attend our lives, to abandon the role of the spectator and join the world of the truly living.

I wonder if we can hold this vision, the imagery of encountering and arrival to walk ourselves closer to this space and time; to here and now. I wonder if we can hold this vision as a lodestar, a guiding light and a way of stepping foot in our lives with full weight, with a closeness between our bodies and our attention. This intimacy of their cooperation is what I hope for.

This is all to say: show up, I suppose, to the doorstep, or intersection or your friend’s house. Enjoy that journey, the commute, the split-second inspiration to take a new route. Then get there and you’ll do as one does and say, I am here, I have arrived.