I get up and go down, get up, go down, get up, go down. Everyday I get up out of bed and go down to the kitchen. Life is in the stairs. I get up and go down, get up and go down and in the blur between bed and breakfast I see my entire life is here in the winding stairs. Here is all there is for me because I can never be where I’m going nor wherever I was.

These stairs seem to lead me from before to after, from above to below, from somewhere to elsewhere. But all those places are elusive unattainable destinations. I’m stuck here in the only place that is never a destination. I can’t go to it. I can’t get out of it. Here is because I am.

Mind only understands movement. It is blind to the space between two places, two spots, two days, two dots. It is oblivious to the here where you are.

“Where are you ?”

“Here, on the stairs.”

“Oh, going up or down ?”

It’s funny because I never have this kind of reflection when I go upstairs at night. Maybe mind is too fuzzy and buzzy after a day of frantically moving to and fro. Or maybe body is just too tired to care. It’s only in the early morning (when bossy brain is still asleep in head) that I realize I am here once again. This is my mini morning meditation. I get out of bed but wake up in the stairway. A knowing that doesn’t seem to belong to either body or brain speaks to me silently. Here is where I’ve always been. Here is where I’ll always be.

Between night and day, dark and light, here on this triangular step in the staircase, I suddenly remember something I’ve always known. This is how small life is. Here on this stair covered with mustard colored carpeting I find what we are all looking for, longing for. It is in this tiny fragment of finite form I get a glimpse of who we truly are. So I go down into the kitchen, sit with my black coffee and buttered toast, with my paper and pen, and start all over again. Grateful.

It is humbling to realize that my entire life is the size of the spot under my slippered foot. And yet, it is there in that miniscule drop of morning dew that I feel my formlessness and remember foreverness.

This is truly who I am. The space between yesterday and tomorrow, between the past which is gone for good and the future which can never be. This step is where I always am, always have been, always will be. Here is not a place. It’s me.

“Who are you ?”

“I’m Here (and so are you).”