The question rose out of meditation.  What do I fear?

Good question.

I fear feeling insignificant. I fear being ridiculed.

Do I?

I fear… And I hesitate. No words rise through the darkness that appears when I think of fear.

I dislike cruelty. Posturing. Abuse. I do not fear them.

I dislike people being unkind. Bullies. I dislike seeing animals mistreated. Children starving. There is much that I dislike. Much I find distasteful.

But what do I fear?

I fear feeling small.

And if I take off the last qualifier, I become my fear of feeling.

I fear feeling.

Cut back to the bone, strip away the skin, peel back the sinew and the veins and I find myself amidst the skeletal remains of my fear of being — nothing. Cut out the tissue. Skim off the blood and get to the guts of what I fear.

What is it?

What is my biggest fear?

Not being loved. Not knowing love? Losing love?

But love is limitless.

Love exists
as only love.
Love is.

I am afraid
of losing
I fear
losing
the ones I love
the things I love
I am afraid.

But I cannot lose Love which makes the fear of losing the one’s I love impossible. For, even when they are gone, love continues, love exists, Love is. Infinite. Limitless. All.

There is nothing
to fear
for Love is
Love
no matter
what fear
rises
to hold me
back
where I feel
nothing
but
Love.

I cannot separate Love with fear. I cannot divide it with 3 parts fear one part avoidance.

Love can
never be
divided.

Love is
and there is
nothing
to fear
here
where
Love is
everywhere.

There is a restaurant downtown that has a sign on the side of its patio, “Free Air’.

The first time I saw it, it made me laugh. I didn’t ask ‘What’s up with that?” I assumed I knew. You’re sitting outside on the patio of a restaurant. The air is free. The food isn’t.

Because of that sign, I created a story in my mind about the owners. Quirky. Ironic. Self-deprecating. Perhaps a little less ‘the road well travelled’ and more ‘let’s chart our own course and see where it takes us.”

I have walked past that restaurant many times during the winter as it is on the route to my Chiropractor’s office. That sign always makes me smile. I also happen to really like their breakfast sandwiches and breads —Alforno is a take-out and sit down French bistro. And yes, the breads are delicious!

The other day, when I stopped to pick up a couple of latte’s and breakfast treats on my way to my youngest daughters, I walked past that sign and saw a man filling his bicycle tires with Free Air.

Yup. Free Air didn’t mean the air we breathe. It meant — free bicycle tire air fill-up!

I laughed out loud causing the bicycle tire filling man to look up. I gave him a friendly smile, all the while shaking my head in fascination at my foibles.

Of course, in defense of my literalness, up until the weather warmed up, the hose for the Free Air was not attached to the valve under the sign. Which means, I saw the sign only in the context of its relation to the outdoor patio, and its literal meaning.

It still makes me laugh to think of my ‘ooops! You’re not being ironic, as in, “Free Air on the patio — all you have to pay for is the food.” You actually are applying a much more practical application of Free Air – and trying to induce more exercise and urban living via the bicycle.

Which, in that context, changes the story I made up about the owners. Now, they’re environmentally conscious urbanites encouraging healthy, greener living. (Though I will tell you that when I asked the server behind the counter if they had any  ‘healthy’ breakfast choices, she raised one eyebrow, gave me one of those ‘you’ve got to be kidding looks?’ and let out an emphatic, NO!)

Which brings me back to the point of this post.

We make up stories about people and happenings all the time. The stories we create can only be in context to what we see and hear, from our perspective, our viewpoint, our beliefs, feelings, understandings, experiences, ideas and assumptions.

Often, we make up our stories based on limited information. Like me with the sign, until the hose was added to the valve beneath it, I was only focused on the words, not the words in context to their application in real life.

How often do you hear or read something and make decisions about that person or situation based on a quick scan and assume you know what’s going on? What if rather than taking your assumptions as truth, you chose instead to delve deeper into the context and substance of what’s happening by stopping to be curious and ask questions of yourself, and others?

How often do you make up a story about ‘why’ someone is saying, doing, or being the way they are, without getting the whole picture?

We are story-telling, and story-making people. We have the capacity to make up stories that shine light on the brilliance and magnificence of ourselves and those around us, or on their limitations.

Which story will you choose?

I don’t know the owners of that restaurant. I do know that the story I made up in my head about Free Air on the patio made me smile — even before I discovered my misconception.

I also know, on a deeper level, that I have many stories I’ve created about people and happenings, that are not so benign. They are limiting in their scope, and my interpretations of their value in my life. These are the stories I need to put in context to that Free Air sign. Like air, I can’t see what’s really going on behind the scenes, or beneath the surface of someone’s behaviours, or my own, without first stopping to ask the question, “What’s up with that?”

But I will admit. I still think my Free Air assumptions are kind of funny! And make a good story about ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Truth”.

_

I found the quote above at Singing Loud and Strong’s website.

When I first read it, my heart smiled in recognition. I love her attitude!

Singing Loud and Strong is recounting the story of finding her car towed away after a really bad day in court. Yet, even in the frustration and crazy-making drama that fall-out of the circumstances of spending a day in court with the husband she is divorcing, she was able to keep it all in perspective. It’s just a bad day.

That’s courage. Fearless honesty. Living her truth with love and grace.

So often, it is easy in the midst of a ‘bad day’ to think, this is my life! Bad from the get-go.

Seldom is that true.

Year’s ago, while teaching a course at a homeless shelter on self-esteem, one of the attendees said, “When I was born, my mother said, ‘he’s a bad one’. I think I’ve been living down to her judgement of me ever since.”

He was 24. Had spent the majority of his young life in and out of correctional institutions.

He’d never had a ‘good day’, or at least an easy one. Life was hard.

In the session, I invited the students to write a love letter to themselves. We talked about the challenges, fears, possibilities of writing kind words to yourself.

“If you can’t write it from you to you, write it from someone in your life you admire, or write it in the words you wish someone in your life had said to you.

The young man wrote the letter to himself from his grandmother. At the end of the session, he asked if he could read it to the class. The class agreed to hear his words.

There is something humbling about sitting in a group of men, all of them homeless, most of them sporting multiple jail-house tattoos and attitude to match, and listening to the words of a young man making them cry.

In his words, possibility awoke, hope arose and spirits took flight.

After he read his letter he told me that even when times were tough with his mother, and in his life, his grandmother was always there for him. “It wasn’t all bad,” he said.

For everyone in that class, as he read his letter, the bad days that seemed to continue one after the other with the speed of a freight train careening out of control, seemed to stop, even if only momentarily, so they could each catch their breath and know, there is good amidst the bad. Possibility amidst the hopelessness. And Love, amidst the fear.

It snowed here last night. The world is pristine and white. The roads not so pretty.

Part of me wants to say, Oh No! Not Snow!

Remembering that young man, I am reminded to move into gratitude. For my life. The love and friends and laughter and joy that permeate every day.

Even with the snow outside, it’s still a good day.

Even behind the grey skies, the sun is shining.

Even beneath the freshly fallen snow, spring is waiting to peek out from beneath the ground.

The snow shall pass. Spring will come and summer will follow. And no matter the weather outside, my heart is grateful for this day.

Life is good.

Namaste.

He said, you ruin everything.

She said, No. Alcohol does.

This conversation happened the night before my father’s funeral.

My brother was holding court on the patio at my parent’s home. He was drinking Irish Whisky in honour of dad, chatting about the past and sharing stories.

My mother was sitting beside him, almost falling asleep in her chair. I suggested it was time she go to bed when my brother told me to stop being so difficult. You ruin everything in this family, he said.

His words came through the fog of grief and Irish Whisky. But they still stung.

And, while his words were said in 1996, they can unexpectedly pop back into my mind when triggered by something in the present.

I know why that moment in time memory came back.

It is March.

On March 17 it will be the anniversary of my brother and his wife’s death in a car accident.

Last night, as I tried to engage C.C. in a conversation about “our relationship” and things we could do to make it better, he jokingly said, “You just ruined my day.”

I laughed and said I wasn’t that powerful and we carried on with our conversation. Okay, maybe not that conversation (what is it that makes men so adverse to talking about ‘relationship’?) 🙂  And yes, that’s a rhetorical question. And yes, I know I was just painting ‘all men’ with the same brush. But seriously? If we don’t talk about the things we can do to create ‘better’ how do we know what the things are that we can do to create ‘better’?

And this post isn’t actually about creating better in my relationship. C.C. thinks it’s perfect. 🙂

This post is about memory’s power to trigger its own threads and leave us having to find our own way back to the present.

Recently I chatted with my eldest daughter about something that is happening to someone in her life that is triggering memories of those dark days when I was lost in a relationship that was killing me.

It’s important to heal trigger points, I told her. But you can’t heal it if you keep your finger on the trigger.

For me, triggers are the gift that remind me to always move into, through and with forgiveness, compassion and gratitude.

Forgiveness, for myself and whomever it is that I hold ‘accountable’ (okay, blame) for the sting or pain or whatever emotion it is that is causing me disquiet today.

Compassion, for myself and others so that I can lovingly disconnect from whatever remnant of the story from the past that I am clinging to that does not serve me today.

Gratitude, for the opportunity to see the connection between the past and this moment right now so that I can lovingly take my finger off the trigger and move back into this moment where I know, I am safe. I am loved. I am deserving of joy. I am human. I am okay.

My brother is gone from this world. The memories I cherish are the one’s that fill my heart with love. I loved him dearly. Always will.

In a meeting yesterday, someone said, while discussing next steps for a project. “We’ve got to get started because, before you know it, a month will have passed and you didn’t even notice.”

Time is on my mind.

As I look forward to where I want to be in the next 6 to 12 months, I see possibilities expanding for me to move beyond the work I do now, day to day, to other things I want to do.

Like paint more.

Write more.

Create more and inspire more through my creations.

And then I trip over myself.

Yesterday, I took on an added workload. When I walked out of the meeting where I’d volunteered to take it on, I had to ask myself, what have I done?

I knew what I’d done. I’d said yes to being of service to others without first stopping to ask myself, Does this serve me well? (And yes, there might just have been a little bit of the ‘I can’t say no’ chatter going on in my head too!)

There is nothing wrong with taking on more work, or pitching in to help out in a bind. In fact, stepping into the world from a place of, “How can I be of service”, creates space for gratitude and humility to be present.

However, when being of service to others adds stress or diminishes your capacity to step continually forward towards your passions, then the act of service is not being made from a place of humility. It is coming from a place of hubris. It won’t lead to an attitude of gratitude. It just leads to resentment, especially when you set yourself up to be taken advantage of through not asking for what is fair, or right, or what you deserve.

I like to feel wanted. That what I do makes a difference. When I diminish my value however, by not standing true to what is important — ie. asking for what I deserve or saying no when I need to — then I am not coming at the work with a ‘pure heart’. I’m stepping in with a hungry heart.

I have a vision to retire and immerse myself in inspiring others to explore their creative essence through offering workshops and teaching people how to tune into their creative core to express themselves freely.

I won’t get there if I don’t stand up for myself and take time to consider each item on my plate and the value it brings to moving me closer to fulfilling on my vision for my life.

Finding balance, measuring our time and considering how best to fill it to create value for ourselves and the world around us, is essential to living pure of heart in gratitude and humility.

Point taken.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The sixth painting in my #ShePersisted series is HERE.