Who Am I?

             Las Vegas Strip

             Las Vegas Strip at night

The sunlight is gently filtered by white sheers. Outside my window a cool breeze is moving the leaves of the palms. I’m sitting on the bed thinking about whether it’s too cool outside to go out to the pool and write…probably fewer distractions here.
I’m looking forward to a nice walk up the Strip after breakfast. Early morning in Las Vegas is quiet and peaceful. I used to get up while my husband and the kids were still sleeping and go for a morning run up the Strip. I loved the contrast of the empty streets and sidewalks compared to the insane crowds of the night before…two completely different faces on the same “painted lady.”
The people you meet on an early morning run have two different faces as well. There are the athletic types out running or walking to get their exercise and there are the people who are trying to find their way home after a long night of partying.
When I was into playing poker here I would often play cards all night and walk back to my room at sunrise. Sunrise is the quietest point of all. The line between night and day when it’s still too dark to be out for exercise and most of the party people have already crapped out and fallen into bed. That point when night rolls into day feels a little like expiration and inspiration and that point in my breath between the two phases. If night is when I expire and day is when I inspire, how am I like the earth turning into and away from the sunlight? What is that place of in-between, the dawn of my breath?
I wish the earth could hold her dawn and capture that moment of daybreak for an infinite pause the way I can hold my breath and hover briefly in that place between inspired and expired. There is something so precious in that holding…a path of stillness that I follow down into my body going deep in the chambers of my soul’s home where I find a peacefulness that has no words.
I am grateful this morning for my ability to find that place of peace within. I want to gather up all the sad and lost and lonely and lead them here. I want to tell them to give up looking for happiness in the lights and the music and the endless pursuit of more. I want them to feel the joy of resting in the tranquil heart space of contentment.
But who am I to assume that they are not? Who am I to think I know the key to another’s happiness? Who am I?