This morning my friend Scott relayed words from an elder when younger people were getting stressed at his job: “Look, this work is gonna unfold EXACTLY as it should.”

Maybe I need to get a little older and a lot wiser to believe that, because I’m still caught up in striving to make things happen. 

But, ironically, (or maybe not, if I really believe the “should” part of the old dude’s philosophy), I had just been walking in the woods with Cedar, and noticing the way the giant leaves of skunk cabbage are unfolding as they come out of the ground. It’s as if they have been exquisitely prepared underground for the present tense, which takes form above the surface of the earth. When the soon-to-be-giant… like bigger than a lot of modern tv screens giant…leaves emerge from the cold muddy earth, we see only a corner of the “inrolled” leaves, literally unfolding in the daylight. 

Maybe — to empirically test the depth of this elder’s philosophy–I should dig down and see if the whole giant leaf is completely formed, all rolled up down there. But maybe doing that would be the exact opposite of how the elder suggests one should live. Maybe I should just observe what I’m presented with?

A young person prompted me tonight to write about “making the future mine.”  I have a choice here. Will I dig, or trust, that things are gonna unfold exactly as they should. 

Where did I leave that shovel? Cedar—who sides with the elder— would still love some digging.