Are We There Yet?

I may not be there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday.
-unknown

Okay...there is one more word that bugs me.  I know, I know I said I was done with the rants on our inappropriate use of the English  language  but I guess I am not done  yet.

YET! 

That's the word that bugs me.  Remember that old scenario,  often  mocked, of a child driving to some destination with his family and who innocently (and annoyingly asks) over and over again, "Are we there yet?"

Yet is a complicated word to understand.  It to some may offer a certain hope.  "No we are not there yet"  or "We do not have that yet"  "I have not finished yet"...implies that though we have yet to arrive, have or complete...there is the possibility that we will.  It is not over yet.

Though I see the hope in it, I also see the problem with it. To me the word  reeks of seeking without reaching,  lack, unfulfillment, incompleteness, and being caught in limbo.  Yet implies that there is something else needed or required to make the moment whole and acceptable; the being full and complete; the goal reached.

Yeah it offers hope but hope for what? Hope that this drastic moment of our life that we can not settle into will soon be over and replaced by a future time that will only be this moment when it comes? Hope that we will become something  in some future fantasy other than what we are now? 

Yet implies resistance...resistance to life because life cannot be anything but in this moment! When we use the word yet we are not living, not experiencing, not embracing the now.  We are caught up in mind stuff and mental modifications that take us away from who we really are. That Self is already whole and complete!

I use it, don't get me wrong...I use it.  I use all the words I question.  I am as much conditioned as the next person.  So, I am not condemning anyone for using these words and phrases. I am just suggesting that  maybe we all begin to examine how we use our language.  Does it help us to grow and expand? Or does it keep us contracted and feeling less than?

Wouldn't it be great if the parents of that child turned around and said, "Take a deep breath.  Feel the air going in and out of your lungs.  Feel your body.  Look about you.  This is your life, right here and right now and you are whole and complete just as you are. You have already arrived. There is no "yet'.... and if you ask us that %^&*($# question one more *&^%$#@ time...we are going to show you just how fleeting life is!"  (Surely, I joke lol...not very Zen like am I?)

All is well