Nothing was delivered / Something was delivered / Yoga Nidra

A few days ago when walking in the woods before work, I saw a man and a woman about my age (almost 62) walking slowly with trekking poles, coming up the trail from the fishing pond in Whatcom Falls Park. We smiled and said hello as we passed on the trail. When I reached the little bridge at the far edge of the fishing pond, I stopped to look over at the water spilling over the small dam and then turned around to go back home the same way I had come. It wasn't long before I saw the couple with the trekking poles, ahead of me on the path. As I approached them, I was looking in curiosity at their trekking poles. Just as I was about to pass them, I looked up and noticed that on the back of the man's dark blue T-shirt was a fairly recent image of Bob Dylan in concert with the words "Bob Dylan" above the image.

In wonder and delight, I said, "Bob Dylan," and they both turned around to look at me. The man said that they had seen Bob Dylan in concert in the last year. He said that he loved Bob Dylan's music but that Bob Dylan shouldn't be touring anymore. He said the concert was awful, and that he felt ripped off. He said Bob Dylan should just give it up. He sounded both angry and sad.

As far as he was concerned, it was the "Nothing Was Delivered Tour" (lyrics and audio clip).

A few weeks ago, a dear friend of mine died peacefully in her sleep at 86 years old. She was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and had been sober for the last 14 years of her full and rich life. She was one of the few women of her generation to earn a PhD and had a successful career in her field of psychology and active retirement years. She was a professed atheist, but said that even though she didn't believe in God, there was something that had removed the demons that had haunted her until 1996, at age 72, when she realized that she was a real alcoholic and, in her words, "It would be insane for me to take a drink."

Part of the Yoga Nidra meditation I have been listening to suggests considering that both of the following thoughts are true in the same moment:

Nothing needs to be done.
Something needs to be done.

Bob Dylan said:
"Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take heed of this and get plenty of rest"
(lyrics from "Nothing was Delivered")

and:

"Sometimes somebody wants you to give something up
And tears or not, it’s too much to ask."
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Floater (To Much To Ask)"

As Solitary Walker commented on my last post, "And 'nothing' is always 'something', after all."

And that seems to be what Yoga Nidra is about.

("The Composer," drawn with chalk pastel on paper by am in the early 1980s)