years have passed since the birth of Omar, the world’s most famous tent-maker, poet, and astronomer all rolled into one brilliant philosophical storyteller. This particular quatrain from the Rubaiyat contains a lesson that has not diminished at all in the passing of a millennium. These famous words embrace a subtle truth that escapes many people.
One way to understand the wisdom of this quatrain is to imagine your body is a speedboat that is cruising through the water at forty knots per hour. You stand on the stern of that boat and peer down at the water. What you would see in this imaginary scene is the wake. Now I ask you to philosophize about the following three questions.
Question #1: What is the wake? You probably will conclude that the wake is the trail that is left behind, and nothing more.
Question #2: What is driving the boat? (The boat represents you “cruising” through your life.) The answer is “The present moment energy being generated by the engine, and nothing more, is responsible for making the boat go forward.” Or, in the case of your life, the present moment thoughts that propel your body to move forward, and nothing more!
Question #3: Is it possible for the wake to drive the boat? The answer is obvious. A trail that is left behind can never make a boat go forward. It is just a trail and nothing more. “The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, moves on …”
One of life’s greatest illusions is the belief that the past is responsible for the current conditions of our lives. Often we assign this reason to explain why we cannot get out of our ruts. We insist it is because of all the problems that we faced in our past. We take wounds that we experienced in our youth, bond ourselves to them, and continue to blame those unfortunate experiences for our current miserable circumstances. These, we insist, are the reasons we can’t move forward. In other words, we are living the illusion that our wake is driving our lives.
Think of when you have had a physical injury, such as a cut on your hand. Your body’s nature takes over immediately and begins to close up the wound. Of course, it has to be cleansed to heal, as do emotional wounds as well. Healing takes place rather quickly then because your nature says, “Close up all those wounds and you will be healed.” Yet when your nature also says, “Close up all those wounds in your past,” you often ignore your nature and instead create a bonding to those wounds, living in your memories and using those ripples out of your past to live the illusion that this is the source of your immobility or failure to move on.
The moving finger that Omar Khayyám refers to is your body. Once it writes it is complete, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do to unwrite it. None of your tears will erase a single word of your written story. No amount of wit, prayer, and piety can change a single drop of your wake. It is a trail that you have left behind. While you may benefit by reviewing that trail, you must come to a knowing within you that only your present moment thoughts of how you process the wake are responsible for your life today.
It has been said many times that circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him. The tendency to blame our past for our current shortcomings is tempting. It is the easy road, in that we have a ready excuse for refusing to take the risks involved in driving the boat ourselves. Everyone, and I emphasize everyone, has conditions and experiences in the past that can be used as excuses for inaction. The wake of all our lives overflows with the debris of our past history. Parental shortcomings, addictions, phobias, abandonment issues, dysfunctional family members, missed opportunities, bad luck, lousy economic conditions, and even birth order are all glaring at us just below the surface in the wake of our lives. And yet the moving finger has written the story and nothing can be done to unwrite it.
Omar Khayyám reminds us from another place, another time, and another language of the simple common sense that the past is over, and not only is it over, but it is not subject to rewind or recall. Furthermore, it is an illusion to believe that the past is what drives or fails to drive your life today. That finger is still attached to your heart, and can write anything it chooses, regardless of what it wrote yesterday. Wake up and get out of the wake, and listen to the wisdom of Omar the tent-maker!
The essential lessons of this quatrain include:
Live today. Let go of all your attachment to your past as an excuse for your life conditions today. You are the product of the choices you are making right now, and nothing in your wake can affect you today if you heed this common sense.
Remove all blame from your vocabulary. Catch yourself when you find yourself using your past history as a reason for your failure to act today, and instead say, “I am free now to detach myself from what used to be.”
Let go of your tears that have been a symbol of your attachment to the past. The sadness and self-pity will not wash away one tiny fragment of your past. Gently remind the wounded part of yourself that that was then and this is now. Learn from those experiences. Bless them as great teachers, and then come rushing back to the working unit of your life, now! There is a past, but not now. There is a future, but not now. From a thousand years ago grasp this simple truth and write your life with it!
Lord, make me an instrument of Your Peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal light.
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
(1182–1226)
The Italian founder of the Franciscan order of monks, St. Francis approached religion with joyousness and a love of nature, calling all living beings his brothers and sisters.
This simple prayer is one of the most famous and enduring of all prayers in recorded history. It expresses the deep yearning within all humans to be the spiritual being who inhabits our physical form. In the words of this prayer, St. Francis describes the essential content of our highest self. I love to silently recite this prayer and also at times to say it out loud.
I believe you make direct contact with St. Francis when you recite this prayer, which was written by one of the most divinely spiritual people who has ever walked among us. The same invisible God force that flowed through this man in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries also flows through you and me. If you feel a connection to the man who wrote this prayer, you may want to read his biographies and watch a movie titled Brother Sun, Sister Moon. His life has been such an inspiration to me that, as I mention elsewhere in this book, I have visited Assisi to walk in the same woods and pray in the very chapel where he performed so many of his authenticated miracles.
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