good morning relatives
its -17 degrees this morning that is the temperature LOL not the wind chill best to stay out o f the wind today
so change change change transformation we have an effect on what and who we are around
I've seen it in my own life I can look back to a short timeline and see what my doing did in those around me and what their doing did in me we created each other over time and what were the ingredients I put in their pot and what did they put in mine and what did we filter or sieve out of ourselves ? because we can we can filter what we take in and we can make and active choice about what we put in others
we can be kind or harsh we can be snide or encouraging we can gossip or turn away and choose to wait and speak the thing that creates rather than destroys and which ever one we do the next time we come around to that place, and we will come around to it, that place and those people including ourselves will be what we put into it the last time it will bend and grow towards that input
today I can see that the world is malleable and I am a potter with hands in the clay and I also see that I want to be a good potter, a better writer, a happy human being or is that human bean? I never really knew that the world my world was that subtle or that affect able its different to feel it in a big grand creation in the moment sort of way or in the epic failure crash sort of way it is very different to feel it in the slow steady tendril sort of way
how cool is that
the wall
where I run smack into my lack of skills propelled by the force or fuel of my own emotional or cognitive immaturity and the frustration that comes when I am wanting to have and do more and not quite able to make it so is a pretty big wall and I think it is time I learned to expect the wall and to run up it rather than into it perhaps that is what growing up means expecting there will be monumental places where I don't know what the … to do and don't have the skill to do it even if I knew
I think that is what I am learning that somehow I don't have to know how to do everything and that somehow life is elastic enough to be happy [despite the fact that I am part of the whole which means I don't have the whole skill set] that I am here and part of the whole wholeness
as I stand here and look back and see wall smack falling ness and ahead and see wall up doable new heightness I think I can do that I can run up the wall instead of into it and I think I haven't got it quite
yet
I ran into a wall like that last year in the spring with a friend of mine she is my oldest friend I think we met in second grade and last spring we were both and both of our lives were in big transition and there was frustration and need for something need for something from each other only
neither of us were quite able to be there in the way that was good or in the way that was Yet who we would be a few months later when we got through a little more of our transition
so we crashed right into the wall of unable to do what either of us needed from the other at the moment and we both fell back from each other and silence ensued between us and that great wall that we ran into loomed and it loomed it loomed so long that I finally stopped being surprised and afraid that it was there and then stopped being angry that it was there and then stopped being bothered by trying to decide if I should make it permanent and go around it and pretend that beyond it my friend and thus myself did not exist because of course I exist and of course she does and it was after all just a wall that was built out of our own stuff and if that is so then we would journey past it over it or around it and go on
thank life that was not the only wall of silence I had encountered in my life thank life it was not the only time I fell off of something and something broke thank life that I was awake enough to understand that there was and is more in the mix than just me and my a and in-a bilities more than her and her a and in-a bilities and more than what life was trying to get out of either or both of us
it wasn't always pleasant the silence and sometimes I would test out the waters to see if anyone was biting yet and then I would go back to work on me and what I was learning
and Ive been learning these things:
dont sweat the small stuff
meaning that intentional negativity is different than not being perfect
{and by the way relatives we don't need intentional negativity to get ahead, we just need better budgeting skills (which is a different conversation)}
not being perfect is confusing because even though I never wanted to be perfect it was demanded of me by me and others but really it wasn't perfectionism, it was convenience and similarity and expectation it was like asking a baboon to be a giraffe and a lake to be the earth that holds it.
perfection was really just someone wanting me and me wanting me and perhaps wanting in a way that was timely something that was at that time not possible and sometimes not even doable ever
take my job for example:
the translation in my cells from intention to fruition is sometimes not quite 100% I have trouble with change and with math I have trouble adding the most simple sums ( and you can forget about complex ones!) and it results in small errors on occasion if there are lots of factors i.e. I am tired i.e. Ive worked more than four days in a row i.e. there are 10-15 people in the store and three behind the counter and 6 outside with gas and I am answering to all of them at once and with math!
just can't translate into exact change for me so I have come to understand that in the Grand Scheme of Things the small stuff is not the change or my drawer being off by $1.23 at the end of the day the small stuff is whether or not I am going to be pleased with my day over all and who I am when all is said and done it is whether or not I am going to beat the crap out of me for not being perfect when i already know that I am not perfect especially with math
it also helps me figure out if I am working at a place that is a good fit for me did I choose to work where I would be respected? where it is understood the nature of the business means that if we can keep it together and dance the edge of as many customers in and out the door as possible without making big expensive gross errors and have reasonably treated them and each other with respect so we will all feel like coming back tomorrow and in the process have not torn down the house, then we have accomplished business
and in that big effort sometimes we are out of certain cigarettes, sometimes we are out of certain ice cream bars, sometimes certain papers run out, and some times I count change wrong or add up the dollar lottery scratch offs wrong or forget to keep a void ticket
but in the mix
in the big effort, what I see is that there is trust we have trust between us all of us the store, the customers the employer and the employees all of us meaning that Im not going to get beat to death if I make an error meaning what they are looking for is an overall positive effort and if I work there long enough then it becomes apparent that if I bring in the door a negative effort they will get negative results that begin to look like a pattern of intent rather than just random humanness.
and If I bring in positive effort then things are clearer and happier and the random humanness sticks out more because it becomes glaringly different! but that doesn't make it bad or me bad
and that is the small stuff
that random humanness that is so glaringly present so sore thumbish when we are standing in the sacred, not because being human is bad it is just different it is just lacking something some things different in each of us when we hold that humanness in the embrace of our innate divineness
how cool is that
life is a big mirror and the store is as well and the reports that are kept as feedback to track how we do, where our human mistakes are showing up, help them see if I am bringing in negativity which compounds into patterns of big mistakes, or if I am working shifts that are not good for me, i.e. too many in a row or the wrong time of day, or if I need a bit of education and new skill or if I am just a pretty normal gal working in a relatively normal way and on a steady regular learning curve
the tracking helps me and them see that I am normal
who would have ever thought that I was normal besides me ?
so how is it that sweating the small stuff about being a human being became so oppressive? how is it that compassion and the peace that passes understanding got passed over?
there have been times that I have been in the wrong place in relationship with people who are expecting perfection from me just because I happen to have some skills and some insights and some wherewithal's that were outstanding and unexpectedly amazing or so very different than they might be able to be, they wanted that amazingness and what it brought but they also wanted me to be all the un-amazing things they took for granted. they expect me to be an all round perfect gal and Im not
I can't be its not in my clay
any of you who have read this blog more than once know that grammar and I are not best buds LOL and my brain is not the same as others and did I mention I am really really non intuitive when it comes to math?
and trust me at age 54 it is not for lack of trying or lack of taking classes or trying to apply myself it just does not stick some of it its like oil and water, its like pulling teeth, or beating a dead horse for me ( remember how hard it is to get through the quartzite and reach the pipestone?) and it is not that I am not wanting and haven't wanted to be a good friend, citizen, companion, teacher, doctor, ceremonialist, etc….. its that there are somethings I am good at and some I am not some things I learn easy and some are like pounding granite with wet noodles
but my goal my eagerness is to become and to develop and somewhere along the way I let someone sell me the idea that my eagerness to become like the acorn reaching to the oak or the larvae coalescing into a butterfly somewhere along the way someone sold me the idea that if I was eager to please I would succeed and that if I failed even microscopically I was worthless
that sucks
because there are some things I fail at not microscopically I fail epically and usually its the things that others can do as easy as tying their shoes with velcro easy for me can be massively non intuitive
and trust me relatives I have felt worthless so many times too many times
and I have to say that it took all this time to chip away enough of the granite fog to get an inkling into the idea that perhaps there was a better answer than being perfect perhaps there were people who wouldn't or weren't so needing for me to be perfect and weren't so threatened when I wasn't perfect
and I spent so much time, energy, emotion, and skin pounding on those great walls that for others were not even ant hills
and I thought there shouldn't be walls but of course there are walls for all of us your walls are not the same as mine and it is ashes ashes we all fall down isn't it?
and thats just it we all fall down we all soar and we all have things we are good at and things we are not so good at and our color our education our money status our size our spiritual whereiwthall our what ever is no advantage one way or another and does not imply that we have all our ducks in a row or even that we have heard of ducks or could teach them to row if we had a boat that did not actually leak and in that case were close to or on water not in a virtual desert looking up at a wall
do you see what I mean
I haven't seen it not for years and years until now smack down on my back looking at the sky wishing I could figure out what happened between my friend and I
I remember what an old friend of mine said to me once, " You've been hanging out with the wrong outfit." and some of it is that I have hung out with people who are rigid and unforgiving and unable to bear my humanness and the reflection of their own in me and at jobs that were the same and so I have over time learned to hang out with different outfits but eventually I also had to change
to change me
small change
adds
up
when my friend and I ran into our wall last spring and we fell back from each other there was a lot of good we both were changing we both were running full head on into our future and wanted the other to be there for ourselves
there was a lot of old shit too obviously there was because neither of us ran up the wall we smacked it and fell back
but what is so very cool about my old friend and I is that we have something between us that endures and that is willing to keep us meandering down the road until we find that all the planets are in alignment and we reach out and touch each other and there we are again
getting up and not taking the wall personally or each others humanness
she's the right outfit and guess what so am I
and we are driving each other up the wall
instead of into it
finally
lol
and we don't sweat the small stuff but what is very cool about getting older and actually slowly and I mean s-l-o-w-l-y growing is that at our indestructible core we are growers we are suck it up and survive it girls and we are loyal and we are friends
still friends still capable of driving each other up the wall
thanx relatives
enjoy your day
I appreciate you
love ya
mean it
mb
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