“What’s next?” the woman in the third row asked.

I always get this question.

The Denali show draws the athlete and the adventurer, the curious and the courageous, the fanatical and the frail.

They all want to know, “What’s next?”

I have to admit to a certain sense of anxiety and restlessness:  I’m not quite sure yet what’s next.  Sure, we’ve discussed the climb in Patagonia.  Ann is keen on the highest mountain in Greenland.  Talk of the Big E, Everest, looms large.

But there’s nothing firmly on the drawing board.

For me, a next is necessary.

Next is our creative soul. It is the stuff of dreams.  It is the spark that kindles our imaginations. It is what enlivens us and drives us forward.

Without a next, there would have been no Einstein or Newton; no Franklin or Michelangelo; no Shackleton or Mallory or Armstrong.

Without a next, there would be no Hawkins or Gates or Jobs or Zuckerberg.

Without a next, there can be no art or music or literature; no cure for cancer; no vision of a better tomorrow, for ourselves, or for those we love.

Next is the divine living within us.

But we dwell in the now; and not the next.  And that’s the bind, isn’t it?

A colleague of mine died suddenly this past week.  Fifty-one years old.  Wife, children, family, friends all left to grieve in the overwhelming shadow of no next.

All we really have is this moment.  Here. Now.

The not next.

Ann and I get so caught up in our creative lives; our writing, our art.  We get lost in our studio for hours and days.  Our minds swirl with thoughts and plans and hopes and dreams; with projects and business plans and marketing concepts; with mountains to climb and oceans to cross.

And all of us lose our days in “I can’t wait ’til Friday” and “whaddya doin’ next weekend,” and “where ya goin’ for the holidays.” And will the shopping get done and the bills get paid and the groceries get shopped and will the house get cleaned and what about the lawn.

Rocketing forward to the next.  And not stopping long enough to appreciate the grandeur before our very eyes. To watch the sunrise, to feel the wind on our face, to listen to the crunch of the snow beneath our feet.  To know and hold the presence of our child or our lover.

If next is a glimpse of our divinity, then living wholly in the now is our full humanity.

How hard it is to get that balance right.  To be truly present.  To celebrate all that we have, and all that we are.

But how critical a task. Because that’s all there is.

To be be fully present and, at the same time, to be fully engaged in our creative genius is the razor’s edge of the Journey well-lived.

It is the universal struggle.

T. S. Eliot understood that it is only thorough unceasing exploration that we come to know ourselves.

Dorothy discovered that the Emerald City had always been within her.  But only after a very long hike.

“From here on, you will be alone,” the alchemist said.  You are only three hours from the Pyramids.”

“Thank you,” said the boy.  “You taught me the Language of the World.”

“I only invoked what you already knew,” Coelho’s Alchemist replied.

We are full and complete and enough just as we are.  And yet we yearn.

Our lives are abundant.  And yet we want for more.

The Journey and the Dream.  The next and the not next.

One cannot exist without the other.

Even in Kyoto,

Hearing the cuckoo’s cry

I long for Kyoto.

— The Zen poet Basho

Stop by for a visit at Hampton Photography.