12 things I learned (or learned again) in 2012

It’s pretty hard for me to pass up an opportunity to share what life has taught me. 2012 was good that way. Being the lesson whore I am, I’ve put together a list of things to share–some lovely, some humorous, some exhausting, and some excruciating. But hey, it’s my life and the important thing is, I’d rather be me than anyone else. So here are a few things I learned:

1. If someone is determined to make you the embodiment of their fears and insecurities, there is nothing you can do about it. Walk away, you’ll be better off.

2. The times they are a changin’, in America. The 2012 political season totally underscored my belief in a cosmic paradigm shift. The 2012 election season demonstrated nothing less than a miraculous leap in consciousness in America. Conversations long overdue happened on issues that will take us miles from our blinders on, capitalistic nightmare. It’s like we’ve finally awakened from the American Dream and now we can do something about it.

3. It’s possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met in person. That was a new one for me. I’m a pretty hard sell on the romantic thing, but it happened to me in 2012 and though it’s but a memory now, I’m glad it happened.

4. If you stay present and keep going, things will get better, you will make progress, no matter what life is dishing out.

5. Most days of my life are awesome. Most days I feel like Hello Kitty incarnate, like I may have been a My Little Pony or a Care Bear in a former life. It’s hard to explain, but it feels pretty good and if you met me, you’d totally know.

6. It really is possible to let go of romantic ideals and love someone unconditionally, even when a little piece of you will always wonder “what if … ?” P.S. It doesn’t have to hurt.

7.  Referring to people with fewer material resources as less fortunate is the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. Anyone who needs to make comparisons between our relative levels of fortune based on how much stuff we have is truly the least fortunate person of all.

8. If everyone read, understood, and practiced the principles in the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, the world would be an easier place to be.

9. Whenever I feel lonely or inclined to strive toward a particular type of relationship (e.g. romantic), what I am really looking for is a closer relationship with the Divine. I seem to learn that one over and over.

10. There are a few things that can make everything better. They’re different for each of us. For me, it’s meditation, bubble baths, writing, and laughing. (I hope you figure out yours and do them often in 2013)

11. Happiness is only available in the now moments. Happiness is for the taking, postponing it in anticipation of some future event is a mistake.

12. Unconditional love can fix any situation, period, end of story.

There are a few other things I learned that were slightly less profound, like how awesome iPhone cameras can be and how great it is to have a cat again, but what really matters is, all things considered, 2012 was challenging in a good way and in important ways, things went more smoothly for me and my family than they have in several years. And for that I am truly grateful.

 

Adieu 2011

As I look back at 2011, I really want to embrace the lessons of the year and just sort of forgive myself for how things unfolded. It was a hard one. The reason it was hard has a lot to do with my shortcomings and lack of awareness. But the great thing is, whenever we are willing, we are able to grow in awareness by facing the people and situations that are in front of us as with as much present moment awareness as possible.

The thing about awareness is, it is the bright light of heaven shone on something previously dark and scary. No monster that you are willing to look in the eye can even continue to exist. That is how powerful our minds are.

I am dating again and it’s going okay this time. When I look back over the past couple of years of dating, I see improvement in some areas where there were a lot of mistakes. I’m still making them, I just recognize things as mistakes a lot more quickly so I make fewer. It’s progress, I’ll take it.

There is a guy I was seeing for several weeks and we’ve had a bit of an unfortunate misunderstanding. I think he feels justifiably righteous and I feel like it’s good to be human, full of flaws, learning from mistakes, being honest, communicating with sincerity. I think he is on the fence about forgiving me for something I said in an e-mail. It’s okay if he takes his time to decide. But it got me to thinking about how many moments invite us to judge one another and how on the other side of those situations lies the real gift, the opportunity to extend forgiveness and compassion to a fellow human being. How can we not forgive each other for not being perfect? We all know that none of us is, but when we choose not to forgive, we are suggesting otherwise.

To forgive doesn’t mean you have to agree with the person’s actions, but you do not mistake the actions for the person themselves. Nobody does things out of a true desire to hurt others, I’m nearly convinced of it. People are motivated by two things, the desire for happiness and the avoidance of suffering. It’s just the things we do to achieve those ends is different for each of us and sometimes when we are seeking happiness or avoiding suffering we interfere with others’ happiness seeking and suffering avoidance. That’s when misunderstandings happen. But when we back up and see that people are not motivated by a desire to do anything to any of us, that they are simply motivated by the same things that drive us all, it’s a little easier to forgive.

When I think about it, the thing we are always dealing with is the illusion of separation. We seek to reconcile with God because of a failure to recognize our oneness with the Divine and we forgive or not forgive our fellow humans for the same thing, for thinking we are separate when we are not. For failing to recognize each other as ourselves and God. It’s the basis for all misunderstanding and sin.

Ourselves, God, and each other. A trinity. A beautiful mystery.

2011 was hard. I declare 2012 the year of forgiveness and gratitude.

Amen.

Bad people

I had a bit of an emotional meltdown a couple of days ago and, as therapeutic and cathartic as it ultimately was, it was a violent shaking of my peace of mind. These moments are hard, but not to be missed on the path to enlightenment.

We all have people in our lives who challenge us. Sometimes in areas that are unpleasant and huge, like patience and our ability to forgive. These interactions can be very intense.

But I continue to believe, in my soul, that these are valuable people who come into our lives to push those buttons. What we learn about ourselves in our most uncomfortable moments is knowledge that is worth its weight in gold. But sometimes you have to dig through some ugly stuff before you get it.

There is a person in my world who does and says things that I wholly disapprove of. If I am honest I will say I don’t really like this person. And yet, the very core of my spiritual beliefs tells me that we are not separate, there is no us and them, no me and her. Which means my disapproval of her affects me. Just as our personalities reflect various facets of our soul, each one of us is a part of the same great Source. When there is absolutely nothing else you can rely on to help you appreciate a person, there’s always that.

What do I always come back to? Remembering that none of us wants anything different from the rest of us, we all just want to be happy and avoid suffering. Some people go about it in ways that are thoughtless or hurtful. Most of the time probably out of complete ignorance of others.

When I thought about this person who is like a thorn in my side, I became very upset. The universe appears to bless this person no matter what. No matter how horribly she treats others, she continues to succeed and prosper. And I had to wonder why that is when everything I have ever read about success stresses being kind. The thing I realized is that it’s not so much how this person behaves as it is what she believes that creates the things that show up in her life. She feels entitled and she does not hesitate to let the entire world know it. And the world responds. The part that she leaves in the fine print is that she’s ruthless. And that is the part I disapprove of.

Ultimately, there is more than enough of everything to go around. There is an entire universe full of creative power. And the key to receiving? Feeling worthy.

Recently I read a quote by Oprah about the difference between feeling deserving versus feeling worthy. There is a difference. Everyone is deserving and most of us can say we feel like we deserve good things, but not everyone feels worthy or worthwhile. It’s a hard thing when those insecurities surface, but it’s worth looking at because feelings of unworthiness can keep truly good people from ever realizing their dreams.

The truth is: We are worthwhile because we were born. We’re here. We showed up for this human experiment. And we should all be living lives of abundance and blessings. 

When you think about it, there really can’t be any truly bad people. There are people who misuse the energy that flows through them, but we’re all just doing our best to feel okay and sometimes we are unskillful. The person I was upset with–and if I’m truthful, envious of–has a lot of emptiness in her life…in areas where mine overflows. She may have some of the things I think I want, but I have been blessed beyond measure with gifts that cannot be bought, nor acquired through manipulation. She deserves compassion, not envy.

Seeing the ugly parts of myself in the moments when I experience things like envy and jealousy is heartbreaking. Even though my thoughts were focused on someone else, my heart was overwhelmed with disappointment in only me. And I am the only person whose behavior I have to be concerned with. I am willing to see the truth that comes from the darkness and become the person I am meant to be.

Lesson learned: I am not a bad person…and neither is anyone else.

Unstuck

Yesterday was a difficult day. I felt trapped by my circumstances and unable to see the bigger picture. I felt like I needed to cry but the tears were stuck somewhere deep inside. I asked God to open my eyes and my heart, but only after I had taken matters into my own hands.

I’m one of those people who often needs a catalyst for tears, crying is not easy for me because I am not always able to connect with my emotions. If I need to cry, sometimes I have to set the stage for it with things like wine and a sad movie. And even that isn’t always easy because there are not very many movies that have the power to bring on the real tears for me. I have a few that I can always count on like The Color Purple. Specifically the end of The Color Purple. Every time I see the scene where Celie is reunited with her children, it brings on shaking sobs.

Last night I drank a fair amount of shiraz and decided to watch the final episode of Lost, which I have on dvd. There is something about that show that reminds me that everything that happens to us in life is both important and not important at the same time. And ultimately, the message I get from the final episode is that when it’s all said and done, the events are just details, what really matters is the people we connect with and the love we share while we’re on this earth.

As I was having realizations about the people who are and have been a part of my life and all the gifts they have brought, the tears started coming. I knew this was the shift in perspective I needed to get out of the pit of despair I had crawled into. As my heart began to open I asked God to help me see and feel the truth.

That’s how it is for me, I have to feel the truth because I am an empath. But when I get bogged down and stuck in life’s minutiae, I can’t feel my own feelings, let alone those of anyone else. At those times the only thing I can usually feel is a self-centered anxiety.

I feel a huge sense of gratitude for the people I have shared love with. Even though I am currently without my soul mate, there is and always has been a lot of love in my life. I truly believe anyone who wants to have more love in their life needs to find more opportunities to give it with no strings attached, no conditions.

There is a risk involved in having an open heart, but the alternative is so bleak that to me it’s not even worthy of consideration. I know this from experience because I lived most of my life closed off from love out of fear of being hurt and general mistrust of people. Then I took a risk and really let someone in and guess what? I was badly hurt. Badly enough to make me consider never opening my heart to anyone again. But I chose to remain open. And not for the reasons one might think.

The reason I have chosen to have an open and therefore vulnerable heart is that to do so is to offer the most valuable asset I have to the entire world, unconditionally. Keeping it to myself diminishes it; the only way to really experience it myself is to give it away. I am not going to attempt to hoard love waiting for a romantic partner upon whom to bestow it. Everybody needs love and everybody deserves love and I am going to do my best to share what I have with anyone who needs it. If and when my soul mate arrives, I will have plenty of love in my heart for him. The supply is endless.

Last night while I was contemplating this, I asked God to help me put it all in perspective. Moments later I read on Facebook that a friend had to put his beloved cat to sleep. I felt real pain at learning this and had so much compassion for my friend that I cried for his loss. Earlier in the day one of the few friends I have known most of my life told me that his dad was not doing well and that he was going to say his goodbyes. As I was crying about the cat I wondered about my friend’s visit with his dad. Within minutes I received a text message from my friend telling me his dad had passed away. This was big for me because when I was a teenager I spent as much time at this friend’s house as I did my own and his parents were like second parents to me. I called my friend and cried with him over the phone. I want these people to know that what they are going through matters to me because I care about them.

What I realized is that it’s all a big deal, everything that happens, and yet, in the end, none of it will matter. The cat is important, my personal struggles are important, my friend’s dad is important, but it’s the feelings that are important, not the events themselves. I never want to stop being the person who will cry over a cat that I never even met. I want to feel compassion, it’s what makes me human.

The most interesting part of last night is that I feel like in having compassion for my friends, I healed what was bothering me. I felt like nobody cared and nobody understood what I am going through. Now I know that is not true, but more importantly, I know it doesn’t even matter. What matters is my ability to understand and have compassion for others because that is where my own healing will come from.

Here’s what I think. Love is a risk, but when you really think about it, nobody can steal from you what you give freely and willingly, so having an open heart means nobody can ever really take advantage. With it also comes the freedom to love unconditionally and show compassion to everyone. And that is the greatest gift we humans can give or receive.

Tough love

The words tough love came up recently related to the reaction I received to some information I shared. It got me thinking about what it means when people use that phrase. I feel much the same about it as I feel about people being proud of their ability to be brutally honest. Some people think that brutal honesty is a virtue. I disagree.

“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.”  ~Richard  J. Needham

Tough love is an oxymoron in my opinion. Love is gentle, there is nothing tough about it. Real love anyway.

As I have written previously, one of my goals is to speak the truth in love. It is my belief that the truth should only be offered from a place of love. I try never to tell people things about themselves with any intention other than to bless and uplift. If I feel judgmental, which I can tell by the negative feelings it brings up, I try to remain silent. If I feel self-righteous, which I can also tell because it comes with a creepy feeling of self-satisfaction that is coarse and ugly, I try to remain silent. If I feel morally, intellectually, or in any other way superior, I try to remain silent. The moment I think that some other person is an idiot or any variation of that kind of frustration, I know it’s time to focus on myself and not them. I do not chastise people and I do not feel the need to force my perception of the truth on anyone because my view of the truth is just that, my view. Nobody has all the facts about another person, so it can be extremely misguided and short-sighted to think it’s possible to have the answers to another person’s problems.

This is why I write this blog from the perspective I do, my own experiences. I try to let other people be and focus my energy on learning my own lessons. I share with the hope that my life experiences and observations about them will help others going through similar things. To the degree I fail to do that, or even worse, when I write out of self-pity, I fail to fulfill the purpose for this blog.

I appreciate honesty and I can handle it however it shows up, but when it is given gently, it is much easier for me to receive the message than if it comes wrapped in judgment and assumptions. I do not believe I am unique that way. Nobody likes to be told they’re wrong, especially in a haughty, self-righteous, judgmental way. Think about it. How do we really reach an accurate judgment about another person when we don’t have every single one of the facts (hint: it’s impossible)? The only way is through assumptions. And since there is no concrete truth behind assumptions, any judgments that arise from them are inherently flawed.

In the most practical sense it seems to me that communicating with kindness is a matter of efficiency. What’s the point of sharing your thoughts and words if your intended audience cannot receive them? As for me, if I am given a gift wrapped in garbage, I will still unwrap it, but it might take me a lot longer to recognize it as a gift than if I am given just the gift itself.

It’s good to be truthful. It’s good to be helpful. It’s even better when it can be done with kindness, compassion and grace. The ones who are able to deliver the truth gently are the true peacemakers of the world.

If you cannot communicate with kindness, whatever you have to say is not important enough to be shared. That is my opinion. But it is just that, my opinion. You get to have yours too and it is equally valid.

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” ~HH Dalai Lama

Forgiveness

This morning I was thinking about how I have learned less about the importance of forgiveness from needing to forgive the mistakes of others than I have from needing it for myself and not knowing if I have it.

Most people can likely relate to what I’m saying, but I don’t know how many have experienced it to the degree I have in the past few years. Everybody has hurt somebody and sometimes we can really feel the weight of our decisions. In my quest to know myself and my relationship to the thing most people call God, people have been hurt. Some of them (my decisions) have been huge and unskillfully made. It saddens me sometimes when I see the effects of my mistakes.

In the past few years I have separated from every person I have ever been close to. Intentionally and unintentionally. It has been the most painful process and series of life lessons I have ever been through, but it needed to happen. Many lessons were learned about relationships and how the universe works. Right now I’m very cautiously considering adding new friends to my life and reestablishing some older connections.

I feel like I can do this now because I am interacting with people again through work and it feels like I am releasing bad karma and building up good. Spending too much time alone is not healthy long-term. Not for me anyway. It automatically encourages too much thinking of oneself. And life is about the other, I am convinced of it.

This is the lesson I have learned over the past couple of years of desolate solitude: My life isn’t about me. My life is about my interaction with the rest of reality. Even when I am alone for long periods of time, I cannot escape the fact that my thoughts determine many things, the impact of which is felt not just by me, but everyone I encounter, however briefly. It is absolutely my duty to cultivate a heart of compassion and forgiveness. We all deserve to be treated with respect, understanding and acceptance. And because we all deserve it, cultivating these qualities in myself is the highest calling to which I can aspire in this lifetime.

This is why I am living life the way I have chosen. Being present and aware is the only way to learn the lessons. Whatever life hands me, my  job is to experience it, to learn from that experience, and with that knowledge, make the world a more loving place.

The really wonderful moments of my life often include these moments of insight. As the answers come to me and I am able to put them into practice, I experience moments of true peace and joy. No external thing can produce, describe or compare to this feeling.

I am doing my best to keep it real, which for me means staying aware, understanding myself and my motivations, and honoring the thing that unites us all. I am hoping that having come quite a distance in the process of holding myself accountable for my experience, I am able to have compassion for those who are still not quite able to. Life lessons come at a high price and I don’t blame anyone for being afraid of going there. Ultimately, my hope is that the quality of my relationships going forward will be much higher than it has been in the past.

The only person I will ever really need to forgive is me. Everyone is doing their best. Anyone I perceive as having harmed me in some way is no exception to that. There is nothing to forgive when you really think about it.

As for me, I have made a lot of mistakes, big ones. But I have never really held a desire to intentionally hurt anyone. My life has been way more about wanting to help than hurt. But I’m human and I have made decisions that have harmed others. I wish to be forgiven for those, especially those I have thus far been unable to correct. It’s never too late and I keep my mind and heart open to opportunities that will lead to neutralizing any negative effects of my actions and to spiritual reconciliation with anyone I have ever harmed. It’s not necessary to have all of these people become a part of my day-to-day life again, but it is necessary for the spiritual connections I have to be of the clearest, highest and most positive frequency.

I have been a bit uninspired to write lately. Fatigue from work combined with thinking hard about people and human nature left me more introspective than expressive for a while. Such are the cycles of life. Things have opened for the moment and there are things to share. This moment will give way to the next, which may again be a moment of contemplation and reflection with little expression. Both are equally valuable.

I have much gratitude for what I have gained through life’s difficulties. Insight is an amazing gift. Seeing more, seeing a grander picture. The world is so much bigger and richer coming from the perspective of awareness.

All the things I went looking for, unconditional love, acceptance, kindness, understanding, and compassion, I found them. Inside.

I am blessed.

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” ~Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”  ~Maya Angelou

“I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go ’round and ’round, I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go.” ~John Lennon

Choose your weapon

A couple of days ago I was really feeling the weight of the life path I have chosen for myself. But I need to remember it is my choice and that is the reason it feels like work sometimes. Many people go through life on auto pilot and life sort of happens to them by default. That’s how it felt for me up until a few years ago. Deciding to show up for my own life requires me to build muscle in areas of my life where I was completely sedentary for many years. Now life presents challenges and I have to meet them using tools I previously didn’t even know existed.

Life does get easier in ways as I continue to practice my beliefs. It is largely due to the greatest reward of mindful awareness–the power of choice. The knowledge that I don’t have to just let life happen to me has been the most liberating piece of information I have ever received. That I am not at the mercy of a God who is separate from me and is keeping tally of my screw ups in order to punish me properly at the end of my life. Once those shackles came off, life got a lot easier for me.

The thing awareness does is allow one to choose how to respond in any situation. I appreciate being able to choose how I interact with people. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience what happens when I choose kindness in situations when I’ve had other options.

I have figured out there are two ways to lighten one’s burden in life–give away your garbage or give away your gifts and blessings. Giving away garbage seems to cause the generation of more garbage, but giving away blessings not only brings more blessings, it allows a person to transform the garbage…into even more blessings.

I like blessing people. Those are the times when I feel most alive and blessed myself.

When you are placed in a situation where you must choose how to respond, look inside yourself. What do you find there? There are many choices–ugliness or beauty, judgment or compassion, indifference or kindness. It does take a moment to sort through the options and make a decision sometimes, but what’s the hurry? We have all the time in the world.

Unjamming the signal

Why do I have to learn over and over and over that if I don’t take care of myself, day-to-day life will quickly overwhelm me? This is one of the things that frustrates me about myself and one of the reasons I feel like I’m still spiritually immature. As soon as I get tired or stressed, I stop doing the things that keep me on an even keel. Meditation becomes a rushed, half-hearted activity, distractions become very, very attractive and I just want to sleep.

The thing that this new job has shown me is that I leave myself way too open to other people’s energy and need to find ways to better protect myself. I am not without resources in this area, I have learned and been taught many ways to anchor myself and how to surround myself in protective energy. When I have a lot of information coming at me I sometimes forget to use the tools I have at my disposal.

As I learn and grow spiritually it takes me less and less time to remember that I am not a slave to my thoughts and feelings, but sometimes it seems like I have to suffer a bit before I remember that I have control over that. I think the reason it takes a while for the message to get my attention is that now, being around a lot of people again, I am picking up so much more information than I ever have before and the energy that is coming at me is overwhelming. One of the biggest things that has come out of my awakening is hypersensitivity. My intuitive power has increased exponentially during the time I have spent in meditation and contemplation the past couple of years.

There is more than one facet to raising one’s intuition. It’s a great gift to be able to know things unspoken, but empathic people need to figure out when it’s time to pull back or let go.

In this past 10 days of working I have been picking up on people’s insecurities, burdens and energy needs. I’ve always been able to sense what people want and/or expect from me, which is helpful. When you grow up the way I did, that ability can make the difference between life and death. I say that without exaggeration.

As this ability has increased in me, I am able to tell exactly what burdens people are carrying in their hearts. That is not a bad thing. I have a compassionate heart and I can think of no better way to use the energy that is flowing through me than to offer a little understanding to a weary traveler. Like a sip of cool water on a hot day.

I am very thankful that I have this gift, but if I want to keep using it, I need to stay connected to the Source. All I need to do is remember I have support. I may not have family beyond my children or friends who are close right now, but there are people who care and there are angels who love to protect and help me. I need to remember I am not alone.

Today is a day of releasing. Letting go of the energy I picked up during the week. Time to take a moment, think of the people I interacted with during the week, bless their journey and let them go. There may be people who become friends out of this experience, but it’s just as likely I will move on and never know them again. Either way my goal is to leave them better off if I can. God willing.

To do that I need to make sure I have something to offer. I want to present my best self–that’s the one with the power to change the world.

Battery is about 50% recharged. Thank God for Saturday. A day of rest is a holy thing indeed.

Be careful what you wish for…

“To be nobody-but-myself–in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” ~e.e. cummings

It’s been one week since I started working again. I knew it would be hard in a lot of ways, but a lot of the ways in which it has been hard are new to me. This is the human drama as it plays out for the awakened person walking with awareness in a world full of sleeping people.

Some of this is vaguely similar to the way I have felt my entire life, sort of generally uncomfortable and odd. It gets old, this feeling of being different. It makes everything feel like more work because in addition to whatever else is going on, there is the struggle to appear to be coming from the same place as others when it’s not even close to true.

What’s so wrong with being different? Why do humans find diversity so hard to embrace?

A big part of my new job involves communicating by phone with the public. This afternoon I was assigned to listen in on the phone calls of someone who has done the job for many years. There were phone calls from people who were confused and people who knew exactly what they wanted. The person taking the calls was equally impatient with every caller regardless of how they came across.

The thing is, I have compassion for the person whose calls I was listening to. She’s been doing the job a long time, it’s not rocket science and answering the same questions over and over gets old. I get that. This does not make her a bad person. But in the 90 minutes I sat with her I knew I was with a person who is sleepwalking through life. Life is happening to her and all she can do is react. I know what that’s like because that used to be me.

The last phone call of the day was from a person who identified himself as Robert, a 100% disabled veteran. His difficulties with speech sounded like someone who’d had a bad stroke. He struggled with understanding what was told to him, yet here he was, trying to take care of his business on his own. The representative I was learning from could not contain her frustration. She threw her hands up in the air, rolled her eyes, signed heavily and was nearly pounding on the desk. Thank goodness it was a phone communication.

As Robert worked and struggled to complete the transaction and understand all the information he was being given, I was very quickly endeared to him. He was simple and kind, thanking the frustrated phone rep for what he perceived as her kindness and patience with him and his disability. Perhaps to him, her level of frustration was kind and patient compared to what he normally encounters.

This person was so amazingly gentle and grateful that it was not hard for me to glimpse God in him.

As I sat listening, eyes filled with tears of compassion, Robert thanked my coworker for her assistance and expressed gratitude that he has an advocate at Veteran’s Affairs who would be able to help him with the forms we were sending him. Then he explained that he has difficulty because he had been shot in the head.

More than one person noticed I had an emotional reaction to listening to this phone call. For some reason, the person I was learning from felt guilty when she compared my reaction to hers. She said: I know, I’m a bitch, I admit it. To which I replied: No, no you’re not, don’t say that. Because my reaction to Robert was not meant to be a judgment on her. She was frustrated. She’s been doing the same job for more than 10 years and was admittedly tired and out of sorts today.

Some days it’s not our day to get it. I try to get it every day, but I don’t always. When I miss out, sometimes seeing someone else get it causes me to see things differently. I suspect my coworker got it today because she saw my reaction to this customer. I’m new there, I can afford to react that way. I haven’t taken a single call yet. And yet, just as she taught me some things about our job at this organization, I think I may have unwittingly taught her something about our job on this earth.

Part of the reason this spiritual awakening happened to me is because I asked God for certain things, compassion being one of them. Just as asking for patience will bring situations that invite impatience, asking for compassion will bring people, like Robert, who need compassion and caring.

As I was crying about this phone call on my drive home, I had a moment of wondering why I have to be so weird. Why do I have to think so differently from the people around me so much of the time? The answer to that question came to me this evening in the bathtub.

I have always wanted to change the world. How can I ever help anyone see things from a different perspective if my perspective is exactly the same as everyone else? When I realized that this is precisely the reason I have to be so weird, I knew that God was just giving me what I wished for.

God, appearing as Robert, the 100% disabled veteran, helped me show someone a different way of thinking today.

Thank God I am so weird.

The love of truth

Speak the truth in love.  That is the main thing I took away from my 5 years as a member of a Lutheran church.  It’s very interesting that leaving that church, which for me was leaving the Church, did not cause me to have bad feelings toward the church, its members, or Christianity in general.  I was more involved in that congregation than the one I had belonged to for the 15 years prior to it and I still love the people I knew there.

I am a lover of the truth.  And I am a lover of kindness.  Which leads me to ask: Is it possible to consistently deliver the truth with kindness?  Is brutal honesty ever necessary?  I say no, it is never necessary.  I think if a person can’t find a kind way to express whatever it is they need to say, then the thing is not important enough to say in the first place.

“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.”  ~Richard J. Needham

My ex-boyfriend believed brutal honesty was the only way to go.  Consequently, he proceeded to tell me some of the most miniscule faults he saw in me.  It was very hurtful at times.  He called me clumsy and weak and once asked me if I ever loaded a dishwasher before in my life because I put a wooden handled steak knife in the machine.  He also told me fairly early on in our relationship that he didn’t love me and when I was away on business once, he told me he didn’t miss me.  Why?  I don’t even understand the point of it really. 

He and I never agreed on this topic.

There is an old saying that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.  That’s a very good (and simple) rule of thumb regarding communicating with others. It reminds me of something I often say about my fellow humans and that is: I have never met a person who needed me to show them their faults, but I have met many who needed me to show them their beauty.

The other reason I disagreed with the ex-boyfriend about his need to deliver the blunt truth without consideration for feelings is the futility of dispatching a message that cannot be received because the recipient feels attacked.  Why bother telling someone something in such a way that they won’t be able to hear you?  Most people shut down on some level and do not process information from a rational perspective when they feel defensive

When I am telling someone something, I want them to be able to hear me, so I deliver the truth with kindness and compassion and I do not bother with information the sole purpose of which is to hurt.  If the only thing that can be accomplished by saying something is to hurt the person you’re saying it to, then that thing doesn’t need to be said.  Because those kinds of things are usually about something that isn’t going to change or the person has no control over and they often contain no truth at all.

When some of the ex-boyfriend’s friends said bad things about him to me after the breakup, this was information that served no purpose but to hurt.  To hurt him and to hurt me.  I was doing all I could to keep an open and forgiving heart and give him the benefit of the doubt knowing that he did the best he could.  Like the situation with my parents, it was a pretty poor best by most people’s standards, but he did his best with the knowledge and awareness he had at the time.  His friends’ attempts to console me by bashing him is understandable given the society we currently live in but nonetheless, not helpful.

Speak the truth in love.  Anything that does not come from love should not be spoken.