I was sitting at the table, water glass in hand, sipping slowly, grateful for the cool, liquid relief on my scratchy throat. It had been a long day spent in enthusiastic frenzy as I assisted, supported, and engaged with some of the world’s most interesting and progressive individuals: leading Integral thinkers. Though I have had a complicated relationship to Ken Wilber’s writing and the theories put forth by him, after the weekend’s much anticipated and wildly successful Integral Theory conference (for which I had the good fortune to have a backstage pass due to my association with the organizing entities) I had a new relationship to Integral. I was inspired.

Despite my enthusiasm, the intensity of my participation in this whirlwind event left me with a raging chest cold – my voice strained to a near whisper by Saturday evening. Undeterred, I sat in the Hilton hotel ballroom at 10:30pm, excited about the dance party in-progress, and hoping for the right song to provide the necessary boost to energize me into dancing action. My friend sat beside me, keeping me company in my ambivalence, though I suspect that he was anxious to get up and join the evening’s revelry. We sat together, watching the colorful swirls of bodies in motion, observing and commenting on the unselfconscious undulations of some of our friends and colleagues.

At some point, my line of vision was blocked by the figure of a tall man. He stood in front of me, plaintively, looking shy and awkward.

“Would you like to dance?” He asked.

“Oh, no, I’m not up for it right now. I’ve got a bad cold. Thanks, though.” I quickly replied.

I didn’t even think about it. Not for a moment, My response was so automatic that it escaped my lips as if it had been waiting all day to leap into action.

The problem was, that I DID want to dance. I was PLANNING to dance, hopefully with my friend who was so kindly and patiently keeping me company while I rested. I just didn’t want to dance with him, with this strange man whom I didn’t know and who reminded me vaguely of Yanni with his long curly hair and requisite new age banded-collar button-down shirt. Now, I have no issue with Yanni whatsoever. I think his music is powerful. But I’m not sure I want to dance to hip-hop tracks with him.

The man sweetly bowed his head in acquiescence to my deflection and crept away to the fringes of the dance floor. At that moment, I realized what I had done. In that moment of inauthenticity – insisting that my unwillingness to dance with him was because of my ill-health rather than disinterest in him, I had backed myself into a corner: either I had to continue my ruse, staying on the sidelines for the rest of the evening so as not to hurt his feelings, OR I would get up and dance, thereby sending the very clear message: my unwillingness to dance was a personal affront aimed exclusively at him.

As it turns out I chose the latter. Now, if I had been sitting alone with only my own thoughts, I probably wouldn’t have gotten up at all. I mean, I was awfully tired. And I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I had my friend sitting with me. And he wanted to dance. And I wanted to dance with him. So after see-sawing back in forth across my Catholic guilt-ridden conscience for a few songs, I got up and moved across the dance floor, in diametrical opposition to my former seated position, hoping I would be obscured by the dancing masses. And maybe I was, for awhile. But given the fact that I danced for the next hour, solid, I don’t think I escaped the notice of the sad man who had so sheepishly backed away from my refusal.

By now, you’re probably thinking, “So, what? Who cares if you told some random guy you didn’t want to dance and then got up and did it anyway?”

And I know this is a valid reaction. But I didn’t move 3,000 miles across the country and enter a community of holistic/integral practitioners so that I could or would continue to half-truth my way through life. Committing to being my authentic self means committing to being my authentic self. It doesn’t mean checking out of closeness and intimacy in favor of preserving social niceties. It doesn’t mean refuting integrity by saying one thing and meaning another. It means finding a way to say the often very difficult things we have to say in order to stay close to our center and allow others to stay close to theirs. I’m not saying I should have responded tactlessly, ala,

“Dance with you? Good, Lord, no! No, I have absolutely no desire to dance with you. But I might get up and dance with my friend in a few minutes…”

No, that would be excessive. But I could have said something respectful and honest. Or simple. I could have just said, “No thanks” without explanation. Instead, I told him I wasn’t feeling well and then proceeded to get up and shake my thing until the party was over. And there are people with pictures to prove it.

And what was he left with? The tacit understanding that I was definitely not interested in dancing with him. Which is fine—I don’t think he should have come away from the interaction with a sense of hopefulness about the two of us as a romantic possibility. But what an interesting, engaging, juicy exchange we could have had if I could have owned the truth: that although I have no problem, per se, with dancing with someone I’m not romantically interested in, I DO have issues with intimacy to the extent that I don’t want to get physically close to someone I don’t know. Awkward? Yes. Unnecessarily transparent? Perhaps. But it would have been real. And realness is the ineffable quality I found myself starved for in my former nine-to five existence as a research analyst. Realness is what I came here to receive and to cultivate. And here I am, amongst a community of some of the most open, caring, sharing individuals, and the best I can do is offer the lamest excuse on the planet to bow out of a silly dance. Oy vey.

One COULD argue that I was being authentic by deceiving this man about my resistance to dancing with him. The ugly and sometimes painful truth is, I am not someone who alway s responds honestly to people. Sometimes I make stuff up because I don't want to hurt your feelings. Some of you may be walking around with terrible haircuts that you think I'm really jazzed about. I apologize for that and also in advance to any issuer of forthcoming opinon solicitations. I might lie to you, too. I don't know what else to say. I'm not enlightened yet.

Perhaps life (or Integral Theory Conference 2010) will wend its way such that I’ll have the opportunity to reconnect with the man who asked me to dance. And perhaps I’ll explain myself to him and he will look at me quizzically as though I’ve had too many acupuncture needles and sage fumes clouding my interpersonal judgment skills. Until then, I guess I’ll just do my best to accept myself where I am – lame excuses and all.

 "You look beautiful, you know. I was looking at you, across the table, a few times, I looked. Could you see me watching you, tonight?"

So spoke my dear friend, confidante, East Bay savior, and former object of my ardent affection.  He upon whom my romantic gaze was first cast, just one short month into my Great California Adventure.  I had seen him looking at me that night, and we had exchanged  knowing smiles across the table as our other friend related wisdom of life, love. But hearing him tell me I was beautiful was too much. My lips smiled, grateful for the compliment, but my heart winced, sad that I could not assimilate the truth behind it.

It had been a lovely day. Cancelled plans made way for spontaneous gatherings with friends for hikes, studying at a coffee shop, and, to top it all off, delicious aloo naan and saag paneer at the cheapest Indian restaurant in Berkeley.  My friend walked me to my car, as is our custom after dinner. He contends that my father is beaming somewhere in his sleep, at peace, knowing  that his daughter is being kept safe. I am convinced he is right about this, and amazed that he knows my father so well, having never met him.  As he wrapped his arm around my shoulders to brace against the chill of the summer evening, I reflected upon my riches- my cozy house, its attendant access to a consistent connection with Mother Earth via a wooded park, and deep connections with some of the kindest and most open-hearted individuals the world has to offer.  In that moment, I felt I wanted for nothing. My heart was warm, stoked by the coals of comfort and camaraderie.

And then he had to tell me I looked beautiful.  One would think, given the history  of my former infatuation with him, that I would have been glowing - having felt the wound of his rejection many months ago, I should feel some sense of restored equilibrium at his declaring my beauty with such strength of conviction, yes? And though there was a small spark ignited - some piece of me that delighted in hearing his unequivocal appreciation -  the better part of me felt deflated, being  thus confronted, for the umpteenth time, with my inability to receive that for which I so desperately yearn: to be seen as beautiful by one who knows me - who has seen the darkest and ugliest impulses that course through me, and loved me still, loved me more, because of them .

The story of our friendship is a strange one - beginning with my soaring hopes for an authentic  connection with someone whose love for exploring life and consciousness ran as deeply as my own, and ending...well, it hasn't ended yet. This is a first for me - usually, if I've developed feelings for somebody and cast them in the potential-boyfriend box, and they tell me they're not interested in me in "that" way,  I cannot, will not simply move them to the friend box.  My fragile ego will not allow me to be faced with constant reminders of the rejection via a continued connection. I just let the guy fall off my radar screen. And truth be known, we made the transition from romantic possibility to friendship haltingly: it was not easy for me to shift from the heights of my limitless happily-ever-after imaginings. I tried very hard to freeze him out.  However his persistent insistence that we try to see if something friendship-related could emerge wore down my resolve. And somewhere, in the recesses of my brain, a piece of me was very ready to let go of some of my defendedness and to allow someone to touch my heart. Even if he'd already wounded it once before. Having blazed through the smoke and ashes of dissolved romantic aspiration, what was left was the seed of something true: a connection with a man who cared about me not because he wanted to sleep with me, but because, having felt his way around the possibility of a relationship and rejected it, he saw in me a strength of character and a lightness of being that he wanted to be around.  He actually liked me for who I was.  And the comfort conferred by this realization: that I could drop my "I'm -your-perfect-woman-just-you-wait-and -see" rigmarole and just show up as I am - messy complicated, and sometimes a little edgy -  was immeasurable. I found myself revealing more and more of the seedy underbelly of my thoughts and aspirations and he saw them, understood them, and received them with open hands.

So when I'm standing under a streetlight in downtown Berkeley, and he utters those precious words, telling me I'm beautiful, I cannot conceal my lack of faith by assuming he's just saying it to be nice - I know he means it. What I'm left with, then, is my own inability to take it in, to believe it of myself. It's no longer my mother, or those mean school kids, or the world who finds me unattractive - it's myself. And all the greek choruses in the world singing my praises to high heaven ain't gonna make a damn bit of difference.  I'm still stuck with me, myself, and my inability to accept and believe in my own beauty.

I drove home with a heavy heart.  I thought , "How will I ever receive love or appreciation, if I can't even hear someone say I'm beautiful without pushing it away?"

I don't know the answer to this question. My strategy thus far has been ‘fake it ‘till you make it.' If I can't actually believe I'm beautiful, then at least I can imagine that it's true, take it on, try it out. I can perform those actions that contribute to beauty in this world and trust the notion that as I DO, so I AM.  But these strategies hearken to Jedi Mind Tricks - a decent start to self-confidence, but no substitute. Ultimately, I'm not sure this is something I actually have to figure out. My feelings of insecurity serve a great function in my life - keep me from overinflating my self importance and resting on my laurels. I still yearn for the day when someone, anyone, tells me I'm beautiful and I feel the truth of it in my heart. Until then, I'll gather the compliments like favored photos in a scrapbook, allowing myself to trust that they reflect the truth, even if I can't see the full picture.

 Two nights ago I was lying in bed consumed with uncertainty. For all the silent pep talks and prayers I had uttered hoping for some guidance and clarity about my life direction, I heard no call, received no email, intuited no insight that could rescue me from the darkness of the unknown, and the insidiously creepy fear that this existence: me and my coke-bottle-thick glasses (which mask paranormally advanced myopia) a half-full glass of water and some mediocre reading material might well constitute the heights of possibility for me and my destiny.

I know this seems like a ridiculous conclusion to draw. Even more so because these past eight months since moving to California have been the most deeply satisfying months of my 32 years. We'll blame the existential confusion on my recently uncovered histrionic personality disorder that has thus rendered me incapable of seeing or responding to anything except the latest dramatic occurrence in my otherwise-staid existence. Though I have had good reason to question the stable underpinings of my life of late, the fervor I dedicated to grasping at the straws of future fufillment was, if I'm honest, a bit excessive.

At any rate, I was lying there, barely attending to the book I was purportedly reading to distract myself from my mind's neurotic conjurings, when I heard a light rapping on my door. Too lazy to get up and greet my unexpected visitor properly, I unceremoniously yelled, "Yeah?!?" as my roommate delicately opened the door and poked his head in. On my better days of feeling strong in my place on Earth and the contribution I make here, I have been told that I can be graceful. I don't think anyone seeing me in that moment -  propped on my pillows like an over-stuffed teddy bear, baggy sweatpants and bulky sweater obscuring my frail and wounded ego -  would have accused me of any such capacity.  I was feeling tired, cranky, and forgotten, and if there was grace anywhere in the vicinity, then it was lost on me. My roommate, an unheralded life esthetician, a man whom I have come to rely upon for his almost-magical ability to both perceive and articulate the beauty and power of absolutely anything from a sunrise to a pair of dirty socks, seemed unaware of the thick cloud of dread and dis-ease that surrounded me.

"Have you seen the full moon?" He asked.

I was taken aback for a moment. As a self-anointed astrologer, it may seem incomprehensible that I had been so wrapped up in my difficulties that I had forgotten to gaze upon or even notice the full moon blazing quietly in the night sky, but the truth is that I have always been afraid of the moon.  A fiery archer who has occupied her time and energy on casting far flung arrows of hope, aspiration, and achievement in the waking world, I have vastly preferred to stand in the sun. When I feel Father Sun's rays casting his fingers down my face, it's like I am being touched by God. The sun always feels so sure, so certain, so constant, rising each day to greet sentient beings with its unconditional warmth. 

The moon always seems so...dark. And uncertain. And remote. I've never been able to spend much time with the moon, because I am so quickly unsettled by its ineffability and inconstancy. The way it waxes and wanes, crests and falls. I could never depend on the Moon to bring comfort or peace -  all I could do was appreciate its exotic beauty and its power to govern the most intimate and hidden places of the earth, however undiscoverable they remain.

My roommate looked at me expectantly, as if remaining in the gallows of my bed, were akin to heresy. Realizing, finally, the blessing his visit bestowed in jarring me out of my defended self-absorption, I threw back the blankets I'd gathered around me and we proceeded out the sliding glass doors of my bedroom and onto the adjoining deck. The air was warm and milky and the Moon loomed large above our perch, high among the hills of Oakland. Even through the jagged lenses of self-pity and doubt, I marveled at the luminous vision, its beauty made all the more precious by the fact that the very next day it would no longer be full, having begun its monthly descent to the merest sliver of a crescent.

We stood there side-by side, my roommate and I, taking off our glasses and putting them on, covering one eye and then the other, exploring the moon in all its mystery. The colors, shapes, patterns, and shadows were endlessly reconstituting themselves, fusing and separating and morphing into this and that like an ethereal kaleidoscope. The longer I stood there gazing at the moon in all its strangeness, the less I felt I really understood it. So much activity and intensity, and yet so changeable and fleeting. I had the distinct sense that my understanding of all that she represented was like the merest drops of water in a vast ocean. I was mesmerized and horrified and exhilarated all at once - completely overtaken by the velvet beauty of standing squarely in the face of so much life that is ever-unknown, ever unknowable. Avoiding this confrontation had been the impetus for the discomfiting malaise I experienced in my bed only a few moments earlier when I demanded of God: "What's next?" "Where do I go from here?" "When will I be relieved of this messy confusion?"

Standing in the light of the full moon, I think I received the answer to these tremulous questions,

"The confusion is where it's at, sister." the moon seemed to say with a wink.

 

I walked into my favorite coffee shop, arms swinging, feeling proper and proud - I was wearing my knee-high black boots, a short black mini, and hair piled high like some throwback to a ‘60's go-go dancer. I was feeling mischievous -perhaps due to my high regard for the sexual power of my footwear.

I gave my order - a large chai soy latte -  and, anticipating the not insubstantial wait time it takes to produce such a luscious beverage, I scanned the room to take in the personalities around me. My eyes came to rest on a woman to my left. She was perhaps a bit older than I, and dressed in yoga pants and a hoodie. She looked tired but happy as she leaned over her stroller, smiling and cooing at the no-doubt precious creature nestled within. In that moment, I felt my self-satisfaction withering away as wave upon suffocating wave of envy washed over me: whatever her life was that allowed her to enjoy a leisurely morning at the coffee shop with an adorable newborn, I wanted it.

Her appearance suggested to me that she was a stay-at-home mom of reasonable means, out for morning exercise and coffee alongside her brand-new bundle of joy. The impression this woman made with her delighted smile and absorbing love unleashed a long-held melancholy - one that is programmed deep in the sinews of my body. I imagined that she owned one of the beautiful houses towering over my own much-beloved but modest rental. I imagined that she was married and that her husband was unendingly happy to be spending the rest of his life with her; a reality made all the sweeter by this new baby: a physical and enduring manifestation of their mutual love.

My reverie was interrupted as a man in a business suit brushed by me, excusing himself and reaching around me for a plastic lid to cap his steaming cup of coffee. Undeterred by this momentary diversion, I turned back to the mother, to see that she was now staring at me. The palpable longing of her steady gaze said, "I want to be you. Whatever life it is that grants you the freedom to wear knee-high boots and a carefree smile, I want that."

In that moment I met her eyes, and I understood the folly of so much time spent conjuring imagined scenarios. I understood that, in fact, I had absolutely no idea what her life was like. I had no idea of the insecurity that might plague her in her new-found situation, the sleepless nights spent in selfless service to this new being. Perhaps she dreads each day as a forced reconciliation to the reality that her life is no longer her own. Maybe her husband is having an affair about which she maintains a stoic silence. Or maybe there is no husband to speak of, a cold hardship that the neediness of her new baby reinforces with every cry.

And me? What might she imagine of me? Does she wonder how many men I've conjured with my sassy shoes and short skirts? Does she envision me packing a carload of friends into my vehicle and heading to the city for a night of martinis and dancing? Does she long for the bright potential of limitless possibility lurking behind so much unencumberance?

Or maybe her eyes belied a longing of an entirely different sort. I just don't know do I? As I stood there, imagining and re-imagining, her ideas about me, my ideas about her - it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that we all of us are totally in the dark about what another person's experience of life is. It seems to me, that the quality of our relationship to that life ebbs and flows with time and circumstance. I walked into the coffee shop mighty and proud. I walked out of it weak and sad. Which vision speaks to the real me? Am I a carefree sparkplug, ready to be ignited by the romance and danger of limitless possibility? Or am I a spinster-in-transit - an increasingly hermetic theosophist who not-so-secretly yearns to be confined by intimate partnership and the duties of motherhood?

If I had to answer to this rhetoric, I would say: Both/AND. I am both carefree, full of limitless possibility AND a melancholy singleton searching for the person and home to contain and constrain those possibilities, AND a whole bunch of other complex and interweaving personas. But depending on which day you catch me, I can be convinced of the inescapability of whatever single, dramatic role happens to have captured my imagination on that day.

And so, once again, searching externally for confirmation or denial of my standing in the social hierarchy of the world around me, I am thrown back upon myself - forced to desist drawing conclusions about me and my story. Instead, I must tread the waters of uncertainty - I am no archetypal or mythic figure playing out a prescribed role. I am raw potential and each day and in each moment I can choose to show up for my life or hide behind it. One of my roommates, a dear and wise man who himself defies stereotype, recently said to me, "Take off your lenses." At the time I was confused and off-put. Now I understand. If I take my lenses off, I can more clearly and accurately perceive and respond to what is in front of me. This morning I would have seen that the woman to my left whose interaction with her newborn dominated my thoughts, was a woman, slightly older than I, with a stroller, who was cooing at her baby and waiting for coffee - no more, and no less.  And what of me? I was a thirty-something caricature of a go-go dancer waiting for her chai soy latte - no more, and no less. Had I let go of the fairy-tale-like stories I told myself about this very simple and, frankly, uninteresting scenario, I might have experienced something that was real and true. Perhaps I could have been curious about the woman, asked a few questions. I might have had an authentic experience - instead of another trip through the illusory landscape of my imagination.

G.I.Joe used to say "Knowing is half the battle." So there it is. I'm aware of the fact that I impose arbitrary assumptions on others and their circumstances in order to reinforce the sad tales of (my) woe I've become so intimately familiar with. Does this mean I am suddenly going to live in the Power of Now? I highly doubt it. But then again, I'm releasing my penchant for making assumptions about situations, so I think I'll end with this.

I don't know.

There. I said it.

 

Usually I have some kind of high-minded relationship to life and the content that forms my human experience. But as I grow older, turn more inward, and peel away the crusty scabs defending me from life's onslaught (and , sometimes, preventing me from showing my true colors,) I find myself becoming less and less inclined to go there. Sure there is a "reason" for everything in life. In no way have I suspended this belief. But I am beginning to realize that in many ways, it doesn't really matter that so much human suffering occurs within a meaningful context. My belief in the ultimate perfection of the Universe and we who inhabit it certainly can be a salve that helps mitigate the suffering caused by the circumstances of my life and the world around me. When the news informs me that a troubled adolescent boy has opened fire on his classmates, believing, (as I do with all my heart,) that there is some plane of existence on which this these tragic circumstances are acceptable, even fruitful to humanity's evolution, helps me  to sleep better at night. But the more I get in touch with the quality of my own and other individual's unique suffering, the more I'm no longer interested in distancing myself from it - checking out of the emotional experience in favor of intellectually understanding it.

Case in point: I was robbed the other day. Some folks took advantage of the swirling storm system pounding the West Coast in order to break into my car and steal my CD collection and my briefcase via a smashed-in passenger-side window. I sat in my car at 8:30 on Saturday morning, staring, disbelieving at the thousands of blue green glass particles strewn about both inside and outside of the car. My initial response was to gather up as many shards of glass as I could. The visual representation of my shattered faith in the invincibility of my life here in California was too much to manage. Unaware of the missing items, I initially convinced myself that it was a mistake - some freak of nature caused by the storm system that had passed through. As I realized the scope of the theft, however, I understood. Somebody (or, somebodies) had stood outside my cozy house in the Oakland Hills, not more than a few hundred feet from where I soundly slept, shattered my car window and stole my stuff. The actual missing items were of little relevance to me - I was getting tired of my CD collection and my briefcase had naught but some old class notes and a few personal reflections contained within. No, the material items that were stolen barely registered on my psyche. It was the theft of my sense of safety and comfort in my own home that remains the reverberating loss that still echoes in the hollows of my raw and aching heart. By violating my personal space, the thieves disabused me of my erstwhile belief that my (relatively new, but still deeply valued) home, the place I hold most dear and sacred for replenishing and renewing my self, was a place where I would ever again be totally free from anxiety and worry.

This feeling of being violated is not new to me. In point of fact, this is not the first time I have been robbed in close proximity. My sophomore year in college saw me and my then-boyfriend being held at gunpoint on campus at Emory University the night before the Oklahoma City bombing. And, in my more detached moments of observation, I see how these experiences give me a much needed shake-up. How they force me to reckon with the reality that we all of us are never, ever, truly safe. Life can come at you with both barrels blazing in any moment, at which point it's between you and your maker whether or not you get to keep playing this game. But right now, in the wake of replacing the glass, cleaning up the remaining shards, and piecing back together my sense of belonging to and on this Earth, I am not interested in being high-minded. I am a little scared, and a lot sad that we humans do these things to each other. That, in looking out for ourselves and our personal satisfaction, we trample on others, destroying precious facets of their relationship to life that can never be recovered. Maybe this is what they call growing pains.

A lot of my more conscientious friends and family members rail against the materialism and attendant devolution of the spiritual underpinnings of Christmas, and the holiday season in general. But I like to look at the bigger picture. After all, what other time of the year inspires such warmth and generosity of spirit, such unabashed expressions of care and good-will? Would I like to see this kind of allowing and enfolding of humanity all year-round? Certainly. But it makes my heart happy to experience someone extending themselves in the name of love, no matter what the rationale. If the Christmas/Hannukah/Solstice/Kwanzaa, etc. season is an excuse for humans to display the kinder, gentler sides of their personalities, then I say long live the holidays. We can always use a little  more open-heartedness in this world, no matter how fleeting and far between such episodes may be.

It has been sometime since I have written. I am finally resurfacing from the deluge of recent and accumulating responsibilities in my new job, new state, new life, long enough to reflect on my experiences here.

The topography of my life has altered dramatically. One month ago I was in Maine. I was busy, but forlorn - for all of the interesting and challenging projects and activities I undertook to occupy my time, and all of the amazing people I spent time with, I felt somehow disconnected. Now, in the Bay Area, having begun a counseling psychology program of the transpersonal variety and working for the department of Holistic Studies I find myself immersed in spiritual inquiry and experience - and I've never felt so at ease.

It's so strange to uproot one's self so entirely, to switch careers and locations midstream - and to feel so completely comfortable. Even though I have literally moved across the country, I feel as though I have come home. It has been just three short weeks since I was back East, and I feel like I have always been here. As though whatever I did before this very moment was just a long and necessary detour to come back to the place where I'm meant to be.

I mean this both metaphorically and literally - I not only feel very at home in the Bay Area, but I also feel that, by taking this enormous leap of faith in moving here and beginning a new life trajectory, that I have come home to myself. There is something about committing to one's happiness in such a wholly radical way - leaving behind comfort, prestige, and the easy love of long-forged connections - and rebuilding one's life from scratch,  that, as I am beginning to understand it, shifts one's relationship to one's life. Having wrestled with and registered a resounding "YES" to the age-old question, "Is it worth laying everything on the line for the opportunity to be happy and fulfilled?" I am experiencing joy in a way I never have before.  By choosing to do what I want to do, instead of  what I think is expected of me by my parents, my peers - even by the Universe itself -  I  don't have to struggle to make myself happy. My happiness is no longer relative, pinned to the vicissitudes of life's daily transactions. Instead, it is an absolute value upon which the rest of my life ebbs and flows. This is not to say that, since moving here, I always feel "good" or that, in any given moment, I am enjoying the particular activity I am engaged in. What I am referring to is far more subtle and enduring. It is a deep resonance with the overall topography and trajectory of my life. I am absolutely convinced that I am in the right place at the right time.

 

"I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there." -Mother Theresa

In a time when people are dying daily, engaged in a battle our country should never have undertaken in the first place, when leaders are lying to save face as they push through their self-interested agendas, and when even the most promising political candidates side step and half truth their way to Pyrrhic victories that reinforce the status quo, it is easy to get discouraged about what this world is coming to. It does not surprise me that many of my friends are reluctant or unwilling to fly American flags, even (or perhaps especially) on our country's day of independence. No wonder so many good -hearted people are ambivalent about the future - engaged in cynicism and skepticism about the possibility of better and brighter horizons. It is totally overwhelming to stand in your little patch of the world, observing the widespread and unrelentingly destructive forces at work, and not want to bury your head in You Tube, or reality TV, or whatever your preferred form of escapism is. Try as we might to avoid it, the ugliness is still very much THERE, and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it, and so we bitch and moan, and carry on about how nothing and nobody can make a difference in this world, which of course, also lets us off the hook - if there's nothing we can do about it, then we can continue our armchair advocating, and fall back into complacent complicity.

I write as someone who is, herself, routinely fighting this insistent urge. I am so tired of all of the selfishness and greed that seems so very commonplace in this day and age - it frustrates me that more people don't seem to own their responsibility to our fellow man. I have certainly been known to offer my harsh critique of the state of our union, and the legislators that govern it.  But at this stage in the game, I am trying really hard to abstain from airing these frustrations. It can be very satisfying to hawk indignation at those  people who perpetrate those injustices and weave a baleful tale of doom and gloom, but I have come to believe that perpetuating negative sentiments about the state of affairs in our life, in our community, in our world, is doing just that - perpetuating negativity. It is continuing the cycle of destructive thoughts and energy that creates strife and conflict in the first place. There is an A.J. Muste quote of which I am very fond: "There is no way to peace; peace is the way." I think this sentiment is not only applicable to the concept of peace, but to all endeavors. To experience joy in life, one must become a joyful person - one must rejoice in all that exists right now in this very moment in time. If we are unhappy with what we see on the outside, we must first look inward - change begins with us - with ourselves and our various and relative degrees of self- peace and self-kindness, before we can look to other people and situations to become peaceful or kind, or happy. In other words, the path and the goal are one and the same. If we are engaged in a relentless cycle of tearing down other people, other situations, and other ways of doing things, how could we possibly expect anything good to come of that? Logically speaking it just doesn't make sense that, in putting our energy into and feeding the negative forces surrounding us, that something uplifting would emerge- we have not created the light and warmth necessary for happiness to take hold and grow.  It is through generating positive thought, positive action and positive relationships that positive circumstances will come about.

I know that I cannot end war and world hunger by planting a smile on my face and acting as though everything is good and happy when, in fact, I have been pretty frustrated and sad about my life, about our country, about the world-at-large, for a long while now. Pretending it doesn't make it so. But neither can I expect good things to enter my life if I am deeply steeped in what is distasteful to me about my experience of it. And so beginning with even a half-hearted appreciation for that which exists for me in this moment - as in, I have a really decent job, wonderful and amazing friends, a safe home, etc, etc is, I think, anyway, a good first step toward inviting more enjoyable things to enter my life. And, similarly, by looking out at my country and appreciating those things that are good about the way it operates - our freedom of speech, say- does not take away from or diminish the troubling aspects of our nation's modus operandi, it simply reinforces those things that are worth nurturing and those strengths that are worth building upon. There is no way to a positive and healthfully functioning country. Positive and healthful functioning within the country IS the way. If we want to see good things occur around us, we need to generate good things around us. It need not be a cumbersome process - it isn't our responsibility to shoulder the weight of changing the world. But we can take responsibility for nourishing our own physical and emotional space - planting good, wholesome ideas and practices and watching them grow into waves of positivity. We can try.

For the past several years one of my favorite early morning activities has been to hop into my car and drive north on Route One. Sometimes I stop at the Maine Coffee Roasters in Yarmouth and get a small coffee with soymilk. Other times I drive a bit further north to Royal River Natural Foods – one of the few remaining vestiges of Mom and Pop-dom in the realm of organic grocery shopping in southern Maine. For me, the destination isn’t the main thrust of the journey - it’s the emotional release I experience while driving and listening to a self-selected hodge podge of sappy and depressing music. I could easily listen to this music on my stereo at home, so you may wonder why I choose my car as the vehicle (pun intended) for getting in touch with my most potent and deep-seated emotions. The truth is, I’m not sure I can articulate just why my car has become my haven for letting go. Certainly on a practical level, my current living situation with its constant sanding, chipping, plastering and banging doesn’t exactly provide the type of nurturing support for wholesale emotional release. Come to think of it, the years I’ve had of uncertain living situations with revolving roommates, some more caring and supportive than others, have left me a little wary of the value of home as a place for rest and respite. Regardless, in the seven years of nomadic wandering I’ve done since I left my one and only purchased home in Western Mass, I have learned that a car and some melancholy melodies can be a very cozy environment in which to reckon with the demons that reside beneath the surface.

I am well aware that not everyone’s emotions appear to them as ugly little creatures – some people are perfectly at home in their sadness and angst. But such has never been the case for me. My default setting for life’s traumas has typically been high-minded intellectualism. I like to pick up my experiences, turn them this way and that, and then put them down in their allotted place, a context whereby the benevolent universe is ultimately delivering according to my (and everyone else’s) highest good. I’m highly skilled at this expansive sort of thinking, and I’m sure it has saved me on more than one occasion from downing a bottle of Jameson’s just to secure some sleep at night. But in spite of my above-average ability to rise above the dirt and grit of my life, I am human after all, and as such I find myself having an undeniably human experience- inevitably being forced to contend with wave after unsettling wave of inspiration, joy, passion, anger, and depression. As a perennially mental individual I can distract myself from engaging with these volatile emotions that have seized and capsized my fragile infrastructure, but I have lived long enough to know that my avoiding feelings is about as advisable as a criminal trying to make a quick getaway from the police – they always eventually catch up with you, rip you from your seat, throw you on the ground, cuff you, and make you answer for yourself. When left alone and without musical confirmation of life’s capacity to induce suffering, I tend to personalize these feelings. Suddenly my sadness overwhelms me as though I were the only person in the world who has ever felt like her heart was being wrung out like a wet towel. It is terribly isolating to feel like you have been singled out among the masses for a special kind of private hell. Driving in my car and listening to the musical lot of sad and broken souls trying to make sense of life, I have forged a much healthier relationship with my more challenging feelings because I am reminded about the absolute banality of deep suffering. It’s so done already. Who hasn’t felt eviscerated by the ending of some seemingly indestructible relationship?

It occurred to me this morning, as I was driving, immersing myself in these woeful tunes of loneliness and loss, and shedding tears of deep resonance, that hearing about others’ sorrows may not lessen the pain of my own sadness, but it does relieve me somewhat of my self-absorbed martyr complex and remind me that I am not alone in my pain. We’re all in this together, this experience we call being human. The gut wrenching angst I experienced when I lost my first love was absolutely no different than any other person who has lost a beloved one since the beginning of time.

And as I contemplated this feeling of unity with the suffering of others, it further occurred to me that if we could all just drop our defenses and our constructed storylines and see this truth – that there is nothing we have done, seen or felt that hasn’t been done seen or felt before us – that we are all just mirrors reflecting each other’s light and darkness – that this illusion of separation is really just a dream we all continue to buy into –we might lay down our shields and weapons and know the value of honoring our fellow man no matter how misguided his actions may appear. Instead of impatiently asking “Am I my brother’s keeper” when called upon to give of our time or money to help those in need, we would know this: that we ARE our brethren- that everything we do and say to each other we do and say to ourselves.

I don’t know if I have it in me to let go of my tightly held identity as a long-suffering and unfulfilled servant of the divine in order to truly experience this kind of oneness with others. There are pages and chapters to my story that I’m not quite ready to put into the recycle bin for someone else to call their own. But I am grateful to those amazing musical poets who took the pains to catalogue their personal miseries that I might, for one brief moment, let go of my attachment to the special sense of separateness I have always carried with me and recognize the unity that is forged in this one simple truth: we all share the struggle.

I have never liked Sunday nights. Sunday nights precede my inevitable foray back into the rigid constructs of nine-to-fivedom. For this reason, I can usually count on some degree of melancholy to descend upon my disposition before I settle into sleep of a Sunday evening. Tonight is no different, although tomorrow is a holiday and I don’t have to go to work. Maybe it’s because the cold northeast wind is whipping around, rattling the old panes of my bedroom windows despite the fact that Spring is fully one month into her yearly tenure. Maybe it’s because my roommate has gone on vacation and our place feels like an abandoned warehouse. Or maybe it’s because I’m about to turn the light off beside my cavernous bed, for the umpteenth time, wondering if I will ever stop feeling so small and solitary laying upon it. This last suggestion has been difficult to own, the cold fact of my singlehood reverberating like an echo underneath the comforters I've  gathered around myself. It doesn’t help that every time I attend a nuptially-inspired event for someone I care about I am reminded of just how close I came to tying the knot. Come to think of it, in that relationship it was more like tying the noose, but I didn’t know that at the time my long-term romance went bust, and while I am eternally grateful to have been spared the life sentence, I have, as yet been unable to surrender the fantasy that someday my prince will come and I too will enjoy the comforts of domestic union. I have never regretted one minute of the time of abundant growth that I have been afforded as result of this absence of romantic distraction. Like an ocean I have crashed up against my ideals and discovered amidst the rubble of shattered expectations what is real and solid and good about me. If keeping myself real and present to my life necessitates my wending my way without a co-pilot, then I am here to say, let me live and die alone. But if there be some other context, whereby I might continue this growth in tandem with another, then may the path to our hearts' convergence be illumined. I am ready.