We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For
“There is a river flowing now very fast…
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!”
-Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya Sr
I love this last line “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”. I think that most of us wouldn’t think that we have something that the world is waiting for. We wouldn’t think that the wisdom that we have acquired through our life experience is something that would qualify us as a wisdom teacher.
Yet each of us has unique lessons/experiences that we bring to the table. And while you can read a biography or watch from a distance as someone celebrates their life or implodes it, there are things within that experience that we don’t see. So the more of us that look around us and see who else is in the river with us, the more that the wisdom of each one of us can be shared individually. That is truly something to celebrate.
We all hold some part of our life experience back, like the secret ingredient in your secret recipe. Sometimes because it is embarrasing, or maybe because then everyone would do it that way and we want to be special. But what we forget is that the details of the experience, what we were thinking, what judgments we held, what we ourselves missed when we made that decision – any one or combination of those things could be the most important part of the lesson that we have to pass on.
So look around you in this river of life that we all live in, push off from the shore (the shore is a false sense of security) and see who is next to you. Share of yourself and celebrate your lives together and remember “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for!”
