You are invited…
Years ago, I opened a light purple envelope addressed to me only, which had arrived at my parents house, the same house I grew up in.
My mom had handed the letter to me the day before when I had stopped by in the afternoon to say hello.
Wow, I thought. Ten years. Hard to believe.
It was an invitation to my tenth high school reunion.
My immediate feeling was curiosity, followed by memories of high school, followed by wondering what it would be like, followed by anticipation, all in the course of 3 seconds.
Nah. I won’t go. Look at the price…that’s so expensive! Good lord! I don’t do anything that fancy!
The next day, I thought about the invitation again. I picked it up and re-read it.
Then I found myself filling out the little form to buy a ticket. I called two of my good friends who were in my same class. One said no way, he would never go. One said absolutely, this would be a blast.
Good. I didn’t think my boyfriend at the time would want to go, I didn’t even bother asking him. He wasn’t from my high school.
Then, for the next months, I kept thinking “I could get my money back, it will probably be stupid. I might not even know anyone there anymore. I have no idea who else is going.”
But I knew I was too curious about it to NOT go.
Even though I was never super torn about attending…I really had considered not going.
I would have missed a most dreamlike, semi-haunting, semi-strange, absolutely brilliant experience. Faces appeared before me that I had never thought of for one single second since I left high school ten years before.
People who were wonderfully familiar, but whose name I had zero memory of, people who had morphed into ten year older versions of themselves, an awareness of past-future-present all mashed up together.
Feelings washed through me of the movement of life, how odd it all is, how I understood nothing but in so many ways, it was all bizarre and magnificent.
It was better than going to a great movie.
It was like being in a living dream for me…so familiar, yet completely new, like I just arrived there from another planet with a distant memory of being a human being.
And I could have decided against going, and missed that cool experience!!!
In fact, some of my friends DID miss it. They shared with me their thoughts. They went something like this:
I didn’t want to re-enter difficult memories, people will judge me, I can’t feel confident going in there, this is a mark of how little I’ve accomplished, they’ll be surprised at my appearance, I look horrible, I should have done so much more by now, I don’t have a career which is really embarrassing, I’m such a failure, I could never go in this condition….
The mind can take over your freedom to choose to go to events, in an effort to protect you from getting uncomfortable when you go. Uncomfortable could mean feeling adrenaline, having an old memory arise, feeling sad, feeling bad about yourself.
But who would you be without ANY thought about this future event? With no expectations of how it will go and what it will be like?
What if you dropped your thoughts of comparison? What if you didn’t worry about who you might run into, or what that person will behave like when you see them?
Far more recently than my tenth HS reunion, I noticed one day thinking that I’d like to go back to a place I hadn’t been to in about 3 – 4 years….and then within 1/4 of a second, the thought that I could run into HER if I ever went.
I’ve done The Work on HER. I’ve sent blessings of light to her, I’ve prayed for her, I’ve ho’opono ono’d her (special blessing of Hawaiian origin), I’ve “worked” on that relationship enough where I can feel deep appreciation for all that went down, I even feel grateful.
However.
Running into HER?
That makes me nervous. Just better not go to that place where I might run into her, avoid the stress. Right?
Uh. Remember?….Who would you be without the thought that you aren’t safe? That you were hurt? That something bad could happen? That it would be too hard? That you couldn’t handle it? That it would be dangerous?
That you KNOW ANYTHING about what it would be like?
Oh! Right!
I’d go.
I’d live my life freely. I’d enter a room with my “enemy” with eagerness, knowing I might learn something more important than if I were with my friend, when the time was right.
“When you see him as flawed in any way, you can be sure that that’s where your own flaw is. The flaw has to be in your thinking, because you’re the one projecting it. You are always what you judge us to be in the moment. There’s no exception. You are your own suffering; you are your own happiness.” ~ Byron Katie
I turn my thinking around: I love myself in her presence, I love my courage in her presence, I love my fear, I am safe, I am not a victim in her presence, I can handle all this–I already have.
Turning it around even more: She is safe with me, she did the best she could, she is honest in my presence, she was frightened too in my presence, she is imperfectly wonderful, she helped me (not hurt me).
All these are so true!
“If you blame someone else, there is no end to blame.” ~ Tao Te Ching #79
Notice, every time you blame, you feel upset.
For your own pleasure, fun, adventure and happiness…you can end it…and enjoy going wherever you need or want to go.
Do The Work.
Much love,
Grace