New Year Meditation: Finding a Still Point

Background: For many of us, there will be two sources of stress and pressure. There will be two drives that we here in the upcoming days.

One pressure will be to end the year on a bang. It’s your last oppurtunity to party like it’s 2022. Indulge yourself. Go wild. Cram all the experiences you can into this little tiny window of time.

A second pressure will be to be turn your attention backwards. Reflect. Assess. Set those goals for the new year– resolve to do better, to be better, stronger. More able.

There is nothing wrong with either of these urges. But we have lived out there almost contradictory demands every New Year’s Eve. Perhaps it is time for you to try something new. The good news is that you have been getting ready for this for your whole life. You have built up the requisite skills with your breath itself.

The Practice:

1. Release your worries and concerns at this time. Sit as straight as you comfortably can.
2. Breathe naturally.
3. As best you can, without bringing any concious change to your breath, notice it: notice it with curiosity, interest and gentleness.
4. You might first notice that there are two obvious parts of the breath- an inhale and an exhale. Notice each of these.
5. Notice how it feels in the mouth, nose, throat, esophagus, and lungs. Feel the breath where it comes in around your nose or lips; feel it where it leaves the body. Note the temperature and volume.
6. When you are ready, see that there are more than just those two parts to the breath. There is a pair of transition times too. A time of emptiness before the inhale, a time of emptiness before the exhale.
7. Compassionately study these pause-times, these empty-times. If you wish, experiment with extending these out by briefly holding the breath. A count of 4 will do.
8. Try to become a scholar of your breath, the world wide expert. Note how each of the breaths has so many things in common with the nearly endless progression of breaths that have come before and will come after.
9. Note how this breath– this very one right now– is different from the breaths which come before, and after. There are some tiny ways that this very brief is unique in your entire life. Go looking for this precious differences.
10. Continue to hold each breath up to your most careful examination for how they are connected and how they are wholly unique. Continue to notice the inhale, the pause, the exhale, the pause.
11. Inhale the things you know that you need during this time of meditation. Exhale the expectations that others have on you for this time of transition. (These expectations might come in the form of parties, or resolutions and goals for the upcoming year.) Continue with this until you are ready for to do the work you hear from your own self it is time to do.
12. When you are ready, identify that there are things which came into your life this year. Inhale, as a recognition to the good and the bad that entered your life this year.
13. Recognize that there are things which left your life this year. When you exhale, breathe out in recognition of that which is no longer yours this year.
14. Continue to breathe in that which you gained and that which you lost this year.
15. Now, view the breath differently. Let the inhale be your past, and the exhale be your future. This precious moment right now is the pause in between.
16. Let your hopes be the inhale, and your fears be the exhale. The reality you live is the pause between.
17. Let the things you cannot change be your inhale; let the things you can change be your exhale. Let the wisdom to know the difference be the pause in between.
18. Let this year be an inhalation. Let the coming year be your exhalation. Breathe as many breaths as you need to feel this transition in your body.
19. Remind yourself of the pause between the inhale and exhale, even as you continue for the year which is ending and exhale for the year which is beginning, see that this place you are now is the quiet, liminal space between the two.
20. Rest in that quiet space between.
21. Release this practice when you are ready. Recognize that you can return to it for any time of transition.

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Exercise 71: Find your hope

Background: Today’s practice is deeply inspired by Resmaa Menakem’s ‘My Grandmother’s Hands.‘  I am including it here because  this important book is something that everyone should be reading right now.  It is explores questions of race, white supremacy, and trauma by exploring where these things live in our bodies.  It is not easy work for an old white guy like me; but it is important work.  Contemplatives and those who love spiritual practice might find this approach to be a powerful one.  Each chapter features practices like this one.

To be honest, I am a little hesitant about sharing this practice here.  I think that this practice could have lots of positives not related to exploring racial trauma and white body supremacy.  And this is my concern: I would not want to co-opt and distract from this important work.  I am also aware and sensetive to the issues around white people stealing the work of black people without approprite credit and attibution.  The best I know how to do in this regard it to state again, emphatically, that regardless of your background or history Resmaa Menakem’s excellent ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’ should be on your reading list.

The Practice

1.  Place your feet flat on the floor.  Wiggle your toes.
2. Become aware of your skin.  Note where it is sitting under cloth and where it is exposed to the air.  Feel the textures and the temperatures, the moisture and movement of air.
3. Note where you are sitting.  Feel the pull of gravity pulling you down and the support of your chair, cushion, or floor supporting you upward.  Note the softness or hardness of the places where you are back, butt, and legs touch whatever you are sitting on.
4. Can you sense hope in your body?  Where is that hope living right now, at this moment?  Does it move or change with your breath?  Is there excitement living with your hope?  Anxiety?
5. What specific desires come with finding this hope in your body: what is it that you are hoping for?  Healing?   Success?  Do you have hopes around racial trauma and moving past the hurts you have recieved or the hurt your actions have caused?
6. Can you find any fear in your body?  Where is it?  Does it move or spread?  Does it feel growing and alive or dead and cut off?  Sit with your fear, for a moment.
7. Explore the specifics of this fear to the extent that it is safe, wise, and kind to yourself to do so.  What is it that you are afraid of?  Does this fear imply anything about your relationship to future events?
8.   Hold the hope and the fear.  Experience them both fully in your body.  Take your time with this step.  This is a microcosm for the experience of what it is to be human.
9. Return to checking in with your body.  Notice the way your breath feels.  If you would like to continue but need a moment, take that moment, and then take another.  You can return to a focus on your body by checking in with your sensory experiences that are happening now: listen, for example, for three sounds in your environment.  Look around and name for things.  Take a deep breath and smell the air.  Inquire into your taste buds and see if there is a taste in your mouth.
10. If you would like to continue, you can hold search for and hold other dualities.  Begin by choosing one item from the pairings listed below; (or, of course choose something not listed.)  Some pairings you might try: love/apathy; acceptance/anxiety; like/ dislike; joy/sorrow; admiration/disdain.
11. To the extent you can, find where that first element lives in your body.
12. Explore how it feels and moves within.
13.  Identify some of the  specific ways that this might pop up in your life.
14. Find the opposite in your body.
15. Explore how the opposite feels and moves within.
16.  Identify some of the specific ways that this might pop up in your life.
17. Spend a moment just holding the both of these oppposites together.
18.  If you wish, hold this pair as you return to an earlier pair, such as hope and fear.

 

Exercise 70: Naming (best as a contemplative walk)

Background-   this practice could be connected with a wide array of inspirations.

• Mindfulness and many other Buddhist practice speak about the importance of noting the specifics of the situation we find ourselves in as noted by our senses. Sometimes this is described as noting the ‘thisness and thusness’ of where we find ourselves.
• In the book of Genesis, Adam was given the task of naming things in the Garden of Eden.
• Francis is known to have described the living and nonliving things around him with familial titles: for example ‘sister moon’ and ‘brother sun.’

 

This practice is ideally done as a contemplative walk.  A good contemplative walk carries a tension within it.  Of course safety is ultimately important.  Therefore, diverting some attention to an awareness of how to get home and ensuring that we don’t walk into an unsafe situation are very important.  Walking into an unsafe situation might be failing to look both ways before we cross a street.  It also might be making sure we don’t wander into neighborhood that is unsafe for us.

However, being too planful takes some of the power out of a contemplative practice.  I believe in something larger than us that will guide our steps when we are willing to cede control of our destination.  Even if I am wrong on that, it is clear that being too strategic and logical ends up giving over a certain measure of headspace over to the logical, planning side of our brain.  As a result, we end up not being as fully contemplative as we might have hoped for.

If a walk does not make sense for you right now, much of this practice can be applied to a more sedentary approach.   A practitioner might find value in applying this practice to a place they think they know very well.  It can be surprising the things we discover when we look at familiar surroundings with fresh eyes.  Alternatively, Finding a seat with unfamiliar surroundings can also bring new discoveries.

Before beginning the practice description, I would like to own and name the reality that this practice can feel a bit silly.  The internal monologue would look rather amusing if viewed out of context.  I believe that a little silliness if quite a powerful thing.  Most of us (including me) are entirely too grim and somber about our spiritual practice.

The Practice

1.  Begin a walk with a cultivated sense of purposelessness.

2.  Identify something in your field of vision.  Greet and name it.  (e.g. ‘hello tree with yellow leaves on the north side.’  or ‘Hi, fire hydrant with a rusty chain.’)  work at noticing and naming in a way that identifies the uniqueness of this one particular thing you are seeing.

3.  Note, name, and greet the next thing in your field of vision as you continue your walk.  The goal is to produce a nearly nonstop litany of the things you encounter.  If someone were to hear your thoughts, it might almost sound like a guided tour of the walk.

4.  As you continue the walk, see if you can apply it to sounds or smells.

5.  You can similarly greet feelings, thoughts and memories as they come up for you.

 

Exercise 66: Mindful Eating

Background:   Mindfulness asks us to sit with our sensory experiences.  It recognizes that our ability to taste, touch, and smell does not have the ability to look to the future or the past.  Nearly anything can be approached this way.   But eating is a good place to begin, particurly for sevens.  When Enneagram lore identifies ‘gluttony’ as the sin of sevens, they are careful to point out that this means more than food.  But food is certainly a part of it!

This is a practice that can be done with incredibly tiny parts of food.  To anticipate the eating, for example, of a single M&M can be a joyous, delightful thing.

As written below, this practice assumes that you will have something prepared to eat.  But there is no reason to begin feeling present once the food is prepared.  Being slow and aware during the process of getting the food ready is a great way to be.

 

The Practice 

 

•  Take three deep breaths: inhalations and exhalations.  Finding yourself here.

• Experience yourself as existing in the center of a vast network of relationships, all of which collaborated to bring this food to you.  Consider the person who sold it to you, the person who stocked the shelves.  The shippers who transformed it.  The farms that grew it or the factory that packaged it.  Allow yourself a moment of grattitude for this network of relationships; widen it even further if you wish; consider the people who trained and supported the shipper, the sales people, the farmers., for example.

• Behold the food that you are going to eat.  Seek to see it as something truly unique.  This is not just an example of whatever sort of food you are eating (i.e. it’s not just an apple; it is one particular apple.)  

• Turn the plate so that you can view this from some other angle.  Seeking to discover something about the appearance of this thing.

• Smell the food.  Make yourself present to this scent.

• Place a small bite of the food in your mouth.  Explore this texture with your tongue.  Don’t bite into it yet.

• Note the flavor and the texture of this thing.  See if this texture and flavor are  unifrom.

• Now, bite into this food slowly.  Notice the ways it is ground between your teeth.  Be present to the tastes and the textures that change.  Allow this chewed food to land on your tongue.

• Tune in to the ways that this slowly grows uniform in taste and texture.  Notice any changes in your body as it reacts to the tastes.

• When it is time, swallow this bite of food.

• If there is more of the food left, take a look at the portion that remains.  Note how the bite you took out of it.  

• Smell the food again.  How has the taste changed?

•   Be present to other changes in your body.  Does your belly began to feel full?  Is your throat dry?  What taste remains even with the food no longer in your mouth?

• Repeat steps 6-13 until the food has been eaten.

• Sit in a moment of grattitude for this food. 

 

 

Enneagram Type 4

Background: Type fours have difficulty separating themselves from their emotions.  They tend to identify with these, conflating the feelings with the self. Contemplative practice can help to overcome this tendency.   As we observe our thoughts and feelings, we discover that we are something like the observer, not the things we are observing; if we were our feelings, we would be unable to take a vantage point “above” our emotions and watch them from a distance.

 

The Practice

 

•  Place your feet flat on the floor.  

• Let your breath come.  Observe it, without seeking to change it.

• Become aware of your thoughts, feelings and observation.  Let your approach to the breath be a sort-of object lesson.  Approach your thoughts and feelings just as you approached your breath.

• Observe the things you see in your mind and heart with a sense of gentle curiosity.  If you can, do not judge these. If you find yourself judging, release this as best as you can with the breath.  Try and avoid the hamster wheel of judging yourself for judging.

• Now, became aware of the “I” doing the observing.  Note that this self is not the feelings being watched.

• Sit with this awareness of the observing self.

 

 

 

Exercise 65: Hand Washing as a Spiritual Practice

Background:  The most important thing is that you wash your hands correctly.  See this link for more details.

Once those details are committed to, we can move into an attitude to have about hand washing.  (It was this amazing podcast that helped me to see this, by the way.)

There is something to be said about having a regular return to the here and now through out the day.  Christian Monks had a Liturgy of the hours which called them to their prayers periodically.  Zen Buddhist teachers are known to periodically strike novices to bring them into the present while meditating.  Some people like periodic chimes to help bring them to the present.  Mindfulness and Celtic Traditions both would have us identify common occurences like walking through a threshold as an invitation into the present.

In this time, when suddenly we are washing are hands as frequently as we should have been all along, we have a rather convenient and regularly occurring event that we might use as our gateway into being here, now.  Each time we wash our hands, we could pass those twenty seconds singing “happy birthday” or whatever.  Or we could use it as a time to fully in those moments.

What is even better is that this is an act of self care, an act of affirming our body, an act that carries sensory experiences with it.  Just as we might focus on the feeling of the air right below our nostril as we inhale, we might locate our full attention on the soft, sudsy warmth flowing over our hands.  Our senses– including touch– do not have the ability to regret the past or worry over the future.  This is why tuning into to sensory input is such a centering practice.

Whatever you do, please just make sure you passed the full 20 seconds!

The Practice:

Each time you wash your hands, simply be present to that wonderful moment.  Tune into the temperature and percussion of the water.  Feel the soapy slickness as the lather works up.  Try and find something new about this experience.  Catalog each little detail.  

Enneagram Type 3

Background:  It has been said that 3’s make a conscious and controlled decision to put their feelings away.  This has been compared to a folder, where feelings to access later are filed away. Sometimes, they might even get around to feeling those feelings.  In many cases, being in the moment probably would have been better for the 3. This is a visualization that encourages 3’s to go back to their feelings and experience them.

 

The Practice:  Take three deep breaths.  Find yourself here, and now.

Close your eyes.  In your mind’s eye, see a file cabinet.  Give the cabinet a color. Look closely to see whether it is new.  How many drawers does this file cabinet have. Reach out to it, Feel the cabinet.  

This cabinet is the home of the folder for feelings to be accessed later.  Find yourself with a key in your hand. Of course, you are the only one with the keys to this particular cabinet.  The hanging folders are dark green and hanging. The folder with the memories to access later is right in front. If you would like, you can spend a moment flipping through the other folders.  It might be interesting to know what is there. It might be worthwhile to come back here later and explore the other folders. I suspect they have names like, “Feelings I will not allow myself to feel at all.”  and “Feelings I have worked my way through.”

Today, take out the folder for feelings to be accessed later.  Hold it carefully. Walk across the room. Find yourself in a comfortable chair, or a hammock even.  Respectfullty, carefully, open up the folder. The feelings you have been saving for later will wash over you.

Perhaps they will come on quickly.  Perhaps it will be a slow transition.  It might be an intense, even overwhelming mix of feelings.  If they become too much, you can close that folder. I do not think you will need to close that folder.

Have an attitude of curioisty about these feelings.  Explore them. You can feel them as deeply as you wish to.  Consider whether you know where and when these feelings are coming from.  Sit them for as long as you need.  

When you are ready, return the folder to the file cabinet.  It is quite likely you over use this folder. You can make a decision today, if you wish, to rely on this folder a little bit less in the future.  You can try and be mindful of those times when you put these feelings away and decide, even as you are tempted to file your feelings away, that you wish to experience them instead.

As you close the file cabinet, I hope that you feel a sense of peace.  These feelings which were waiting for you are no longer locked away, but they have been experienced by you.

 

 

 

Enneagram Type 2: Sample Practice

For more spiritual practices coordinated to specific Enneagram types, see Contemplating The Enneagram.  available May, 2020.

Background:  An interesting game to play is “What if there were only type ___ in the world?”    Twos love to help others. They have a great deal of trouble accepting help0 from others.  If there were only twos in the world, I imagine them running around trying to help and support each other.  And none of them getting to do it. Because all of them would refuse the help of others.

Like nearly any comment you can make about personality types, this is of course a generalization and an over simplification.  But it gets at a fundamental reality for two’s: it is easier to give help than recieve it.

As the above thought-experiment demonstrates, giving and recieiving help are both vitally important.  We couldn’t have one with out the other. This first practice equates this interdependence to the parts of the breath.  Just as we could not have an inhale without an exhale, so too we could not have helpers with out those they are helping.

Somewhere, deep down, we might have this tendency to think, “Well, I can help other people… because they have an easy time recieiving help.  I don’t need to be the person who takes help, there’s plenty of other people out there.”

This is an adventure in missing the point.  Much of the spiritual work that needs to be done by twos is allowing themselves to be helped.

 

The Exercise.

 

•  Place your feet flat on the floor.

• Inhale.

• Exhale.

• With the next inhale, think “I can recieve help.”

• With the next exhale, think, “I can give help.”

• For most of the time that you have devoted to this practice, repeat steps 5 and 6.  

• When you are ready, release these words.  Sit in a time of wordlessness.

 

 

Enneagram Type 1: Sample Practice

Exercise C: A Discussion with the Inner Critic

Type one’s often face an inner critic.  A personality-within-a-personality that offers a never ending diatribe about all the things that they are doing wrong.  Sometimes, it is helpful to meet this creation head on.  

There are many ways and approaches to disarming the inner critic.  One is to name it something ridiculous and personify it in a manner that is outragous.  A second is to be more humane with it. On this account, we recognize that it once did us good.  

 

The Exercise

 

•  Find an empty chair.  Bring it near you.

• Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.

• Consider your inner critic and consider the power it has over your life.  Ask yourself which approach would work best for taming it.

• Now, personify your inner critic.  See her or him sitting in the chair.  Imagine the color of the critic’s hair.  The timbre of their voice. See the clothes your critic is wearing.  

• Sit in silence with the critic for a time.

• Tell the critic that it is no longer doing what it set out to do.  Explain that it has worn out its welcome.  

• Dismiss the critic.  Let it disapear.

• Spend some quiet time alone.

 

For more practices curated especially for Enneagram type 1, see Contemplating The Enneagram, available in May 2020.

Exercise 56: An Advent Visualization

Background:  This advent, I have been filled with wonder at such a simple image: A pregnant woman, far from home.  She is traveling with her new husband because they have to.  There is no room in the human habitations.  She gives birth in the manger.  The child is something magnificent.

Because one of the sources of this image for me this year is an entire book, it is difficult to tie it into this practice.  Before we get into the nuts and bolts of this practice, I would like to quite heartily encourage you to check out the wonderful book of my good friend Jenn by clicking here.

This post contains the ingredients for many spiritual practices.  The description below is broken into three sections.  The first is an invitation to reading a number of different depictions of the entry into Bethlehem.  The second is a visualization walking the reader through the events.  The third is a series of reflections, meditations, and questions on these events.

I would recommend choosing only one element from each section for a session.  If this feels productive, you might return to this exercise and choose a second reading and series of meditations for your next session.  Less is more with spiritual practices.

There is a value in wondering about the historical details.  But not for this practice, today.  If it is easier, it would be just as helpful to imagine this scene occurring in a city today.  Perhaps, instead of a donkey, Mary rides in a sidecar of an old, broken down motorcycle.  Or her feet have swollen with the pregnancy and she is pushed by Joseph in a wheelchair.

The Practice.

Part A: Some Readings to Choose From

1.  Release your expectations and stress with three deep inhales and exhales.
2. Consider one (or perhaps two) of the following passages.  You may wish to read it more than once:   

Click here to read Luke 2: 1-20

Or, read this poem about the event:

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,

as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yet there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence eternally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb in your soul,

as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light and sing …

–St. John of the Cross, “If You Want” in Daniel Ladinsky Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (New York: Penguin Group, 2002), 306-307.

Or read this poem

Sometimes I wonder
if Mary breastfed Jesus.
if she cried out when he bit her
or if she sobbed when he would not latch.

and sometimes I wonder
if this is all too vulgar
to ask in a church
full of men
without milk stains on their shirts
or coconut oil on their breasts
preaching from pulpits off limits to the Mother of God.

but then i think of feeding Jesus,
birthing Jesus,
the expulsion of blood
and smell of sweat,
the salt of a mother’s tears
onto the soft head of the Salt of the Earth,
feeling lonely
and tired
hungry
annoyed
overwhelmed
loving

and i think,
if the vulgarity of birth is not
honestly preached
by men who carry power but not burden,
who carry privilege but not labor,
who carry authority but not submission,
then it should not be preached at all.

because the real scandal of the Birth of God
lies in the cracked nipples of a
14 year old
and not in the sermons of ministers
who say women
are too delicate
to lead.

-Kaitlin Hardy Shetler

If you purchased the book suggested above, you might read the passage depicting Jesus’ birth in that book.  Jesus birth happens in chapter 11 of The Favored One.

Part B.  The Visualization

1.  Inhale and exhale 3 times.  

2.  Bring to mind the reading from above.  Sit with the images, thoughts, and feelings that might have come up from you.  When you are ready, imagine the following.  Try and do it from the perspective of one of the characters in the narrative: Pregnant Mary, Concerned Joseph, even The Donkey or a Jesus who has yet to be born.  Experience this scene with your senses.  

They have been traveling all day.  Are they tired and weary?  Is this faitgue tempered with fear or excitement?  What is the temparature, as they enter into a town that is bursting at the seams?  Imagine them coming into the town.  Are there numerous places that are full?  Are the Roman Solidiers standing by, ready to take a census?     Does the concern on Mary and Joseph’s face grow?  Hear the “clop” of the donkeys heels on the hard ground.  Feel the sweat on the scratchy fabric of the shirt.  

There comes a moment when it is clear that there will be no beds for this night, no roof that was made for people.  What are the feelings you experience at this moment?  Enter into the manger.  Imagine the smells that come to you.  What animals are present?  Are they eating or making their animal noises?  Are their flies?  Are their attendants of the animals?  How do they look at you, as you begin to move around the hay to make your shelter for the night?

Take the time you need to imagine the moments it becomes clear that the baby will be born here.  In this place, at this time.  Does the angelic visitation, and the promises made about this child feel close now?  The water breaks.  How do you feel?  How does your partner feel?  Does a midwife come into the picture?  Is their pain?  Medicine?  Joy?  Blood?

Imagine the first time Mary holds the baby.  How did Joseph look when he first held the baby?  When do they cut the cord?  What happens next?

3.  Continue this scene for as long as you would like.  Return to the readings listed in section A.   if you wish.  I would encourage you to return to a passage you read earlier and try out a new reading the next time you engage this spiritual practice.

4.  Sit with this scene and experience.  Let it penetrate you until it is time to release it.  When you have let it go, consider whether you will sit in a time of wordless union or if you will progress to section C.  Here there are some questions and meditations to consider.

Section C: Some Questions and Meditations

1.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Bring to mind your experience of the readings in section A.
2. Inhale.  Exhale.  Bring to mind your experience of the visualization in section B.  
3. Inhale.  Exhale.
4. Sit with any one of the following.  Your may wish to save a second or third question or meditation for the future.

I.  Return to that image of Jesus and Mary entering into the town.  Sit with it for a moment.  Now, make the town of Bethlehem your mind and heart.  See Joseph and Mary entering into this space.  What thoughts, feelings, or experiences are you having trouble welcoming?  What difficult realities are you struggling to accept?  See that their is a manger within you.  This is a small, forgotten aspect of your own inner self.  But it is all that you need.  Invite this formerly unwelcome aspect of your own self here.  Soon, Jesus will come into the world from this very space.

II.  See Mary’s belly swollen with life about to enter the world.  Christ is being born in you even now at this very moment.  Sit with this experience of Christ being born in you.   Feel it coming from elsewhere and entering into your world.  Don’t rush this birth.  Sit with what it could mean and how it might change you.

III.  Dwell in the stark, perhaps uncomfortable reality of Jesus birth.  It is no less paradoxical and extreme than any other birth.  Filled with pain and possibility, hope and agony.  It is bloody and scary, intimate and clinical.  Take your time to put together what you have known and experienced of human birth and realize that all this applied to Jesus, too.  After you have sat with this, consider what it might mean.  What does it mean about God?  What does it mean about Jesus?  What does it mean about you?  How does it alter your past?  Your present?  Your future?