Playing “Frogger” in My Meditations

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Love in the Third Degree.

So often when I meditate and “dream,” it’s of journeys, roads, movement. It’s not uncommon to find myself as a driver or passenger in a particular car (not mine) and making a particular journey with someone and sharing it intimately. Or sometimes being alone and watching the traffic up ahead in a vast stream of others making journeys. But it’s always forward movement. I’m never standing still for long or sitting still, unless it’s in a moment of sharing.

In today’s meditation, I saw something different, and it was all I saw this time. This and nothing more.

I was not flowing with traffic or fighting it…exactly. I was, for the moment, at a standstill but calculating the next move.

I stood in the median of a superhighway…at least six lanes in front of me and six behind me, but I didn’t look behind me. I knew instantly that it was there and there was no going back across the way I’d come. There was little earth at my feet and I didn’t look down (or up). I knew that there was a thin steel rail where I stood and it was the only barrier between past and future.

I didn’t look back, didn’t look left. I looked right, up the highway toward a vast curve that flowed out of my site. Cars were coming, six lanes across, unceasing and unyielding. Many had their lights on, though it was day, and the sun was shining brightly on them, glinting on their headlights, the same headlights that get them across country and life only a few well-lighted paces at a time.

They never slowed down. There was never a break in traffic. It was constant, fast. I was close enough to the first lane of traffic that I could see an SUV going over me or through me. I’m not sure I was visible or even on the same plane.

I waited for a break in traffic, but it did not come.

I knew there was no other way for me but across.