Reaching

What do you hold in your hands?

Are you clenching tightly?

It may be you have reached a place of satisfaction, sitting with fists full of the stuff of life. Rich, fat, happy, full hands.  But wait! What's that you see over there? Want it?  Hmmmm... No room in those meaty hands. That grip is tight.  Might just have to relinquish your hold on something.  Frustrated?  Oooooh, but that goodie looks sooooooooo tasty. You drool. You want it!  Maybe, just maybe, you can fit one more sliver in your grasp?  Something may be damaged or ooze out between your fingers, should you attempt it.  Should you release a less desired thing and replace it with the new? Decisions... decisions...  

Or are your hands empty?
Are you reaching?  Forward? Or in reverse?
Longing, but never possessing.
There are times one may stand, a hand palm out to the future, and one palm down to the past.
Pulled by wants in both directions.  The tension is great. And typically, it is the present that suffers.

Or perhaps you cling to handholds on the rocky face of a present challenge.
For the moment you are safe, fingertips gripping, toes feeling for an indent in which to rest your weight, even for a breath of time.
Eyes search above, furtively, for the next reach, knowing time is short;  you cannot remain perched precariously, exposed and vulnerable.
You HAVE to press on, and up.  One hand at a time.
And at once there is one hand holding, and one hand reaching.
It's a wild ride, for sure.  

You may be rare.
An arm around your present, hand resting on the breast of your contentment.
The other arm stretching, inquiringly, into what lies ahead.

What's a heaven for, if not to reach towards? To strive?
Staying still is not an option, as the present becomes the past as the moment passes.

What do you hold?