Caring for the Future
Lately, I’ve been sitting with a deep sense of powerlessness in the face of everything happening in the world. There’s so much suffering—so much that feels beyond reach. But one thing that has helped me hold all of this was a story my teacher once shared.
It’s about a young monk who set out on a long journey in search of enlightenment. He traveled for years, hoping to find a Sage who was said to live in a hidden monastery high in the mountains. One night, exhausted and uncertain, the young monk had a dream. In it, the Sage finally appeared.
The Sage extended his open hand and said simply, “Take what you can.”
The young monk hesitated. “No,” he said. “It can’t be that easy. Surely, it must be something more difficult—a riddle, a koan I can spend the rest of my life trying to solve.”
The Sage smiled gently and replied, “You’re right—it is something harder.” Then, opening his hand again, he said, “Take what you cannot.”
That simple story has stayed with me. It reminds me that there are things in life that are unreachable. I cannot save another person. I can’t stop the war in Ukraine. I can’t fix the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I can’t solve the crises of food insecurity, homelessness, or systemic racism on my own. And if I believe it’s my job to “save” any of these, burnout isn’t just possible—it’s inevitable.
The story challenges me in a deeper way. It invites me to keep reaching anyway—not because success is guaranteed, but because the effort itself matters. Perhaps that’s the truer path to an enlightened life: reaching for the unreachable, day after day, with no attachment to results.
We can’t shield ourselves from the chaos of the world. We can’t predict what’s coming or plan our way into stability. But we can find a ground beneath it all—a quiet steadiness rooted in our moment-to-moment awareness, in how we live each ordinary day.
So maybe I let go of trying to do it all. Maybe I worry a little less. Maybe tending to this moment—this breath, this interaction, this small act of kindness—is how I learn to care for the future. And maybe, just maybe, we find our way through this mystery together.
