Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through a place in our yearly orbit where I'm doing what I always do at this place we call May 12th. I'm sending myself a birthday message. Mind you, I really do appreciate the birthday greetings from my family and friends. But I have so much fun composing greetings to myself. They remind me that with each and every birthday I'm completing another journey around the Sun - and I'm starting a new journey.

I began riding on this planet in 1943, so I have orbited through May 12th many times. This place is beginning to look like home. In fact, my birthday is my home port in the orbital journey that life is. Now that I have returned to home port so many times, I'm discovering the benefits of this homecoming. Each homecoming is a chance to see how I've changed since the last time I was here. Each homecoming is a chance to see how I need to change if I want to stay on this heavenly ride.

The longer I ride, the more perspective I have on the journey. Perspective helps me to look at all the mistakes I've made - and extract wisdom from them. Wisdom helps me to forgive myself for having made the mistakes - and it helps me to forgive others for their mistakes. In fact, forgiveness lightens my load so much that my birthdays are actually rejuvenating. To celebrate this, I'm swearing to you now on a stack of Bibles that birthdays do not come and go; we orbit through them. We are not the victims of time; we are passengers on a planet.

I have a lot less to look forward to now. So, I'm looking around more, and I'm discovering all the delightful sights that I missed when I was busy looking ahead. I'm discovering what an adventure it is just moving around inside a human Earth suit. Even though I donned this Earth suit in 1943, I didn't even begin to appreciate its capabilities until I had worn it for 32 years. At 32, I began practicing yoga. I began to appreciate the millions of years of evolutionary fine-tuning that produced the human Earth suit. In fact, thanks to yoga, I now have more strength, more flexibility and better balance than I did when I was 32. But I'm not pushing myself into difficult postures: I'm not forcing anything at all. I'm just learning how to direct awareness into different muscles, tendons, joints, etc. The more awareness is in there, the more freedom of movement I have.

Yes, now that I have less to look forward to in life, I'm looking around more, so I'm wondering: What is this activity that we call awareness? I don't know the answer yet, but that's OK. Maybe when I finally unzip my Earth suit and fly free of it I will get to experience nothing but awareness.

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


return to home page