My Fearless and Fabulous Life

Defending Happy ?

 

 

     So this is what it’s come to…the world is in such bad shape that if you show up with a smile on your face you have to defend yourself for your decision to be happy. Who knew? I thought the goal of life was to find happiness, but lately I have all sorts of people telling me that is the wrong idea. Apparently I am supposed to only see the gray and dingy side of life. Problem is once you start to see life in color you don’t want to return to the gray.

 

     I thought long and hard about what to say in my defense of my happiness, and all I really got was I have no need to defend it. Happiness is a choice, just like it’s a choice to have a cup of coffee in the morning or a choice to buy bananas at the grocery store. I have just as many reasons to choose to live my life in darkness if that was the side of my life that I chose to dwell on. I actually chose to live a tremendous amount of my life in that darkness. Now even though sometimes I still have to walk through darkness to get to the light, I always choose to see the light. If you find that a bad quality to have, It’s only because you wish that you possessed it.

 

     My day today was blessed, because I have the eyes to see the blessings that God sent my way. I spend Wednesdays at the Southwest HIV Center where I have been blessed to know the most beautiful people. These are people who have all the reasons in the world to be unhappy and yet most are so grateful…for everything. I had a client today that was in complete gratitude for the pain that he felt in his feet because at least he could feel them, last week he couldn’t. When was the last time you took the time to be grateful for your feet, even when they hurt? Part of the reason that I love my life today is because I was able to be a witness to his gratitude and got a reminder to be grateful for the most basic of things that I possess. I can say thank you Spirit for putting this man in my life today so that I can remember when I think that things are hard to be always grateful for my blessings.

 

     I was also blessed to hold space for a friend that is going through a dark time in her life right now, and to walk away knowing that she is such a bright light in this world that no amount of that darkness will take that away. The thing that we all have to remember is that no light exists without the dark and no dark without the light. Sometimes we have to live in the darkness for awhile to be able to appreciate the light. I think that is what Tim McGraw is singing about when he sings “Live Like You Were Dying”.

 

     Today I said that I live a charmed life. Not because I have all sorts of material things, lots of money and incredible adventures. I live a charmed life because of all of the amazing people that I have in my life. All of the people that teach me daily how I want to live, because of all of the teachers in my life who have taught me to open my heart and see the world from a whole different perspective. I live a charmed life because I love and I am loved and I have the eyes to see it. 

Conquering Death (just a little)

      A few months ago I took a class called Lifestyles and Diversity. The class is about many different things, but mostly it’s about judgment. Our judgment on everything from illegal immigrants, to homosexuals, to people who have been in prison, to addicts. Basically if it’s a subject that is regularly subject to judgment, it gets looked at.     

     One night that made me particularly uncomfortable was the night on death and dying. A woman that I judged to be completely crazy was brought in to help us take a journey that night. That journey was our own death, or at least the dramatic equivalent that left us all still breathing. Lets just say that my anger caused me to completely miss my own death, let alone the other person that I was supposed to be holding space for in this exercise. I even carried this night around with me for weeks, telling anyone who would listen about crazy death lady and what I had to endure in this class.     

     At one point I thought that I had actually moved past this experience and found a little good in it, but deep down inside there was something about it that still lingered in me. Then I started volunteering at the HIV center and every Wednesday I get to hang out with the (maybe not so crazy) death lady. I thought I was so far past the first night that I even spent one afternoon telling her how much I hated it and how over it I was. Needless to say, she didn’t buy it.     

     Today I walked into a room and death and dying night was being discussed, I ran the other way, because of course I’m so over it. On my way in the other direction “you should come” was yelled at me. I felt that all to familiar anger jump up inside me, but let it out with a laugh and a “whatever”. Every time I saw her for the rest of the day she kept saying come tonight, of course never imagining that I actually would. She isn’t the only one that couldn’t imagine me there, neither could I.                Today of all days someone asked me if when the time comes for them to leave this world if I would be willing to hold that space for them. The second the word yes came out of my mouth my mind kicked in with all of the “what are you thinking” and “are you crazy”, “you know you can’t do that .” I can’t even be present for a pretend death, how could I possibly have just agreed to show up for someone for the real thing. So after some pretty heated debates with myself, I decided that I should go to the class tonight and see if this time I could lose my anger and be present.     

     There are times when you go somewhere and you can’t wait for something to just be over. Then there are times when you are so unmistakably in the right place in the right moment that you could stay in the magic forever. As creepy as the whole pretending to die can sound, there is no place that I would have rather been tonight. I am often greeted by new dimensions of myself that I didn’t know existed and tonight I found one of those. I found out tonight that I do have the strength to not only hold that space for someone that I care about, but even for someone that I have never met. It’s not really a scary place to be, it’s one of the most loving and compassionate things that one could ever do for someone. To let yourself go so completely even for just a moment in order to share the experience, without all of our judgment about death…what a gift.     

     So thank you death lady, you bring a special kind of love to the world, thank you for bringing some of it into mine. Your gift is a gift that not all can handle, and I want to acknowledge you for that. Your light shines brighter in a space of death than most of us in the brightest parts of life. Thank you for the gifts that you gave to me tonight, I accept them with so much gratitude. I feel somehow tonight like I conquered death…just a little. 

 

Change

“All Changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us, is a part of ourselves; We must die to one life before we can enter another.” - Anatole France

     The last week has been long and, full of change. Not just changes in my life, but changes in the lives of those around me. Lately it seems like the changes are coming so fast and furiously that I can hardly keep up with all of them. While I know that change is necessary, lately I feel like the women in the old commercials for the bubble bath and I just want to scream “Calgon, take me away!”     

     Change is a tricky thing. Sometimes everything about it is good, it was waited for expected and anticipated all in a good way. Other change feels more like growing pains. You know somehow it’s necessary, but it hurts none the less. Today like always when I am fighting the changes in my own life, the universe finds a way to make me thankful that my changes aren‘t as bad as I thought.     

     A couple of weeks ago volunteering at the HIV center, I met someone who was to become a full time client. Three days ago he was admitted to the hospital and asked if I would come do Reiki for him. When I got there to see him he told me that they were going to be doing a biopsy on his lung, and one on a lymph node to see what was wrong. He told me the things that they thought it might be and neither is a good choice for someone with HIV. I was blown away when he took my hand before he went into surgery today and said “ It’s all ok, it’s part of my journey, and I’m excited.” “I will either find a way to be healed or I will die a peaceful death.” All I could do was smile and be thankful that once again someone I was supposed to be helping had given me just what I needed. A reminder to face all change, good or bad, with grace and courage.     

     I know that change under the best of circumstance will never be as simple as I would like for it to be. We all like our neat little world where all things are familiar, even if we know it won’t last forever. Today facing the worst kind of change that one can imagine I found my hero for change. From now on no matter what kind of change I find myself going through my new motto is “It’s all ok, it’s part of my journey, and I’m excited.”