Here at home, my sisters challenge me. It's not intentional, it's simply that we're not completely on the same page and I've really come to appreciate their ongoing inquiries into my word choices and thought patterns. Personally, I beelieve that the whole "like-minded" concept is over-rated. If you're constantly preaching to your choir; if you're mainly surrounding yourself with others who look, think, talk, dress and act as you do, then you are severely limiting your growth potential. Diversity fuels us and it makes for the healthiest eco-systems, too. Do yourself a favor and contemplate the diversity in your day-to-day intimacies, now.
My sisters also push me to clarify my meaning. Words like 'masculine' and 'feminine' feel polarizing to them and so I am inspired to dig deeper to get to the root of why I believe these adjectives can provide us with a road map back to our wholeness. Last week's Valentine's rants on this here blog were partially inspired by conversations with them.
Today, M. was gently questioning me. She wanted to know if I was, again, feeding an addiction to pain. "Yes," I responded, "I've been looking at this since October. And, here's the thing - I believe that we've normalized pain. Look around," I said, motioning with my arms to outside the car windows, where row after row of square Craftsman homes sat. "This is painful. We're not meant to live this way - separated from each other and isolated. Spending most of our precious time working jobs that don't feed our Spirits just to pay the rent and the car and medical insurances. We're social beings, hard-wired for meaningful contact with ourselves, each other and our Earth. Yet, the idea that this is "normal" has become so subliminal and commonplace that we no longer stop to question it."
"It seems like everybody wants to believe that love and life should be so easy. We just click our heels three times and Mr. Perfect arrives at our door. Or, we snap our fingers and the fortune and fame is here, now. However, if we were truthfully honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge how lonely and sad this existence makes us. Instead, we don our makeup and masks and we plaster big smiles on our faces as though we can fake it 'till we make it. Meanwhile, we're dropping like flies from diseases in our hearts and our minds and cancers to our body and our planet. But, I guess that's all just "normal," right?" I asked.
On Sunday, one of my brothers was encouraging me to leave San Diego. "Maybe, this isn't the place for you," he said. "Yes, I've been feeling into that," I responded, "and, during this year of the Snake, I simply feel that I have to give it one last push here in this almost-fertile soil that I've spent good time churning and cultivating. I beelieve in US," I said to him. "What US?" he defensively retorted and all I could do was laugh as we walked back towards the large group of 40+ people gathered on the grass - brilliant others who the texture of time has bound me to. Woven together, our stories of shared successes and triumphs, failures and fights, is the fabric that warms and revives us.
And, I guess I am just willing to put all of my perceived "pain" out there as a wake up call. I am also willing to show back up to the rocky terrain of re-defining what is normal for US. It's not an "easy" ride, no. But what I am learning is that it is a most exquisite journey. Dancing with N. on that same day - a sister whom I had just navigated the turbulence of hurt feelings and miscommunication with - taught me this. It was deep and authentic and true as we held each other and softened into LOVE.
