Pregnant

Anticipation is part of the joy - a large part - of knowing when something you've wanted or wished for will happen. Studies have shown that when people are given a choice of whether they would prefer to visit a dream destination within a week, or within a couple of months, the vast majority preferred to wait. Why? Anticipation.
Dreaming or imagining something you long to do can be bittersweet if there seems to be no end in sight to longing and yearning. But all that wistful yearning becomes gleeful anticipation when a wish or a dream is coming true. That's happening to me right now. I'm living in a state of happy anticipation for the fulfilment of a long-held dream. Goddess knows I've had my share of joy and wish-fulfillment this year, and I'm very grateful. It hasn't always been this way for me. In a number of my earlier posts from the previous 2 years, I discuss making the best out of restrictive, mundane circumstances - living in the moment and enjoying just breathing, walking, eating, listening etc etc and so forth. You know - the "be here now" thing. I still try to be completely present and in the moment whilst doing those things, but I've got the added bonus of anticipating a wonderful event coming into my life. In just over 6 weeks from now I will be seeing a dream come true. I'm going on a yoga retreat in a magical, mystical part of the world, very far away from home, somewhere I've longed to go for many, many years.
My regular readers will no doubt have observed that I've don't name exactly where I live or where I've been or what place I'm writing about. That's because I want to emphasize my experience, and what I learned and felt. In other words, I prefer to write about my inner journey more than the external one. I also like to think that much of my inner life could happen anywhere, and isn't necessarily the product of where I've been. Of course, a change of scenery is more likely to create a change of mind than the tedium of daily, unchanging routine, otherwise there wouldn't be so much travel literature out there. And I also realize that the yoga retreat I'm going on is in the sort of place that would make it almost impossible not to name, which I shall do when the time is right. But for now, I won't be specific because this particular blurb is about my anticipation of the whole experience, and not the place itself.
And so the experience has begun. My life and time spent doing what I do every day has been enriched merely by the fact that I'm full of expectation. Looking forward to the very near future is not robbing me of the present moment, not in this case. In fact, when small, ordinary irritations and inconveniences occur, I just close my eyes for a moment and think of what's to come. I'm not wasting the precious here and now with dreams of what isn't or hasn't happened. I'm making the present moment richer and deeper with pleasant thoughts.
My year so far has been filled with adventure and new experiences, and in-between those times I've been blessed with the anticipation of more to come, because I know and like what's coming. Constant yearning is distracting and deleterious to conscious living. It can make a person bitter. Anticipation makes a person better. And I'm better these past months than I've been in a long, long time.
Blessed be.
- G. P.