I found David Whyte's poem (see below) <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/david_whyte_a_lyrical_bridge_between_past_present_and_future#t-859422" rel="nofollow">and talk </a>helpful on facing the future with eyes wide open and hearts strong. He was inspired by his his 23 year old niece's 500 mile walk to the sea in Spain where the the road drops away, and only sea is in front of you. The groundless sea, he muses, is the future.
It's where we all are at this point, especially now with three hurricanes and west coast fires, dark money fueling politics, and knowing it's only the bare beginnings of what we are facing.
He talks about having a mature relationship with reality -- you get to a point where you don't know how to proceed. You see the path, then you don't, then you see it again. This is what we all are dealing with.
I want to face the future (and the present as well) with the maturity he speaks about. Allow my heart to be broken, and go forward with strength. All with eyes wide open.
Santiago by David Whyte
The road seen, then not seen, the hillside
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall - and the way forward
always in the end, the way that you came, the way
that you followed, that carried you into your future,
that brought you to this place, no matter that
it sometimes had to take your promise from you,
no matter that it always had to break your heart
along the way: the sense of having walked
from far inside yourself out into the revelation,
to have risked yourself for something that seemed
to stand both inside you and far beyond you,
that called you back in the end to the only road
you could follow, walking as you did, in your rags of love...
Excerpt from “Santiago” From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte ©2012 David Whyte,