Every moment...is a moment of NOW...and every moment of NOW is....perfect

Coming back on the plane today I was hit by the insight that it as a result of leaving my family to go away to boarding school and never really going home again that I am neither known or understood within my family. How could I be when I left home at such an early age. My parents who thought that boarding school was so good for me made the decision to send my two brothers who didn't want to go. This decision is still having a ripple effect almost three decades later. On the plane I was hit by the unrealistic expectation I always have when I go home and that is that I will be included and not feel like an outsider. Every time I return disappointed that this didn't happen. What I have seen now for the first time is how on earth could I expect this. Inclusion whether it is with family or friends has to be earned and I just haven't earned it. Writing this I feel shame about how uncomfortable it is when I go home. Instead of being grateful for their love and friendship I wade in with questions and opinions and intrude without invitation into their lives. This has been such a sobering insight for me and has shifted radically how I am going to be when I go back again at Christmas.

Once again I am left asking myself why do I get these insights so late in my relationship with my family. If I got this years ago then my visits home could have been much more pleasant. I think there is also something about not living in Ireland when all the rest of my family are. I don't think they can understand why I choose to live in England when everyone is in Ireland. I can't answer this question either. At one point I had made plans to return to live and went to a leadership conference in Dublin which I have written about in this blog. After this conference I shelved my plans for returning to live in Ireland. But if my resolve was strong enough what happened at that conference wouldn't have derailed my plans to move back.

I have taken on in earnest the title of my blog post and it is true that in the moment of NOW there is nothing but perfection and every moment is a moment of now and is perfect. Suffering only comes when we allow the mind to go into the past or the future but in the eternal moment of now which is all there is....all is perfect.