The Quiet Middle

Over the past year, in different ways, I’ve been drawn toward something called presence.

I have to admit—I didn’t really understand what that meant.

Most of my life, I’ve been trained to initiate. To begin something. To move it forward. And then, at some point, to step back and measure how it went. Was it successful? Did it lead somewhere? Did it matter?

So the idea of “presence”—especially described to me once as being like a stone in the Great Pyramid—was difficult to grasp. A stone doesn’t initiate. It doesn’t adjust. It doesn’t evaluate. It simply is… part of something much larger, something enduring.

At the time, that didn’t make much sense to me.

But when I look back over the past few years, a few moments stand out.

I think of a trip to Mt. Shasta with close friends. The plan was to hike, to spend time on the mountain. But a fire cut the trip short. In the end, all we did was drive up, have dinner together, and turn around and come home.

In another time, I would have quietly labeled that a failed trip.

But that’s not how it feels now.

What remains is not what we didn’t do—but the simple experience of being together.

I think of Joshua Tree, where, during a retreat, I was told that I was acting like an “electrode,” helping to stabilize the field along with another person. It wasn’t a role I would have chosen or even understood at the time. It didn’t feel like something I was doing.

And yet, looking back, it may have been the most accurate description of what was happening.

And then Egypt—standing inside structures where stone rests upon stone, in ways that have held for thousands of years. There was something there that didn’t ask to be interpreted or explained. Just a sense of depth… and time… and a kind of quiet endurance.

It’s only recently that these moments have begun to feel connected.

A friend shared with me that he had been searching for his path in his creative work—waiting for some form of success to confirm that he was on the right track. But over time, he began to wonder if the path wasn’t something waiting ahead… but something already happening in the act of creating itself.

That question has stayed with me.

Because I’m beginning to sense something similar.

That maybe not everything needs to lead somewhere else to have meaning. That not every experience needs to resolve into clarity or outcome. That sometimes, what feels like the “middle”—unfinished, undefined, even slightly off-course—may not be a problem at all.

It may simply be where we are.

And perhaps more than that…
It may be where something real is quietly taking shape.

Kaizen Living Retreat!

Taking Time for Healthy Minds and Bodies!

June 18-21, 2026

Location: Land of the Medicine Buddha Retreat Center

Soquel, California