A Sense of Inner Peace

For the past few days my mind has been drifting to visions of the trees that were in the backyard of one of the houses my family used to live in.  When I was a teen, I used to find a sense of inner peace and comfort when I watched their leaves rustle with the wind.  Especially when it got a little stormy in the Colorado summer nights.  I used to open up the window from my room in the basement and let the cool wind blow in with its masqueraded feeling of sleeping outdoors.  I suppose in a way I felt connected with this portion of Nature and found some sort of meaning in its imaginary communication.

This morning I took an hour and a half jog, starting thirty minutes before the sunrise, and ending just shortly after the eastern sky became fully lit.  Silence around me, except for the iPod's "Body Blast" and "Get Busy" mixes motivating me to keep going, scenes of white picket fenced Cape Cod like compounds, horses, fields, and a portion of the western outskirts of the city passing before my eyes.  Mountain range in the distance, city lights still illuminated, a few cars passing here and there.  I'm sure they were thinking there goes another one of those runner fools, up at 5:30 am on a Saturday.  But this morning that run in the cool fall air was my source of inner peace.

Life can be so chaotic, with its obligations and demands.  We're always rushing to get something done, to get somewhere, to make a good enough impression.  We're also always looking for something we don't think we have, but want.  What will it be today?  Where can we take ourselves or how many things can we accumulate in order to show the world that we made our mark?  Some of us are never really satisfied and I include my restless soul in that bunch.  In seven weeks I'll have completed a master's degree and I'm not really sure I learned anything that I didn't already know before-at least from the textbooks.

A sense of inner peace and satisfaction can't be reached by focusing on what may lay ahead, what we've already left behind, or our imaginary worlds containing "the next best thing."  No, I think it comes from a silent voice that realizes that your intangible self and its breaths are all that you really have in life.  All that really matters is that you're allowing yourself to be you, no matter who that you might be.  Nature is content and calm with itself because it simply exists, each piece living out the role it was meant to play.  What we want from ourselves and from others has always been there inside our own souls.  The only thing we've forgotten how to do is express it from within rather than from fleeting external manifestations.    

As one of my favorite songs so beautifully states:  "send me no more angels on a restless wind.  All I ever wanted were the simple things.  If a love like ours means anything, show me a sign honey, dip your wings."         

Try

I see three letters spelled out on the back of quite a few license plates almost every day.  They remind me that you don't really get anywhere unless you take action.  They remind me that you can't take action unless you first dig deep within yourself and face whatever challenge is presented before you-no matter how difficult it may seem. 

When I was working with my trainer, "Doublemint Twin #2," after going through the "on-boarding" classes at my current organization, I'm sure he thought that he'd like to kill me on more than a few occasions.  Not literally of course (well, maybe), but because he had to transform a quiet office priss into a gregarious chip pusher.  Or so he thought.  I usually end up modifying things into some sort of form that works best for me, but he tried his darnedest to mold me into the company's cookie cutter format. 

Those four weeks of training were some of the most challenging moments of my life.  There were many moments where I felt like I wasn't going to be able to hold the tears in any longer, that I couldn't possibly do this on my own someday, and that I was really, really inadequate at the tasks I was attempting to do.  Still, I showed up early every day, tried to do exactly as I was asked, and attempted to put forth the best possible effort that I could.  Now the tasks that were so challenging before are almost like second nature.  I'm good at them, even excellent at some of them.  Sure, I'm human and I'm far from perfect so I do mess up from time to time.  Still, I no longer let those small errors get to me.  I laugh at them, correct them, and move on-instead of beating myself up on the inside. 

I've come a long way in the past five years.  A lot of the invisible lessons that I learned had nothing to do with my company's training manual or what they probably hoped to mold me into.  Those lessons were mine.  They were personal, spiritual, and certainly surprising.  In a way I grew up.  I learned that I had to be me and not what I thought someone else might want.  I learned to first validate myself from within before seeking it from those outside of myself.  I learned to speak up for what I feel is right, to not be afraid of the complications and to finally breathe and let go.  Yes, I'm exhausted as hell and it's almost time to move on, but one thing's for certain: there are no guarantees.

You have to keep experimenting in order to find what fits. And what fits usually keeps changing with your own evolution.  Once in while it stays the same, but if it did all the time, where would the fun be in discovering the full breadth of life?  We are our own creations meshed together with a higher purpose that's entwined with everything else that we see.     

Guarantee or no guarantee: the one thing and the only thing that you can do is try.     

Random Coincidences

I've been having kind of a weird couple of weeks in the midst of an even stranger year known as 2010.  For starters, I've been in a very cantankerous mood.  We female B's get like that when our hormones begin to fluctuate.  So, perimenopause or whatever these mood swings accompanied by fatigue, body aches, too many chin hairs, thinning head hair, and hot/cold sweats are, there have been more than a few random happenings in my environment lately.  One could call it synchronicity or just plain mental craziness, but I really think that perhaps I should start documenting them.  You know, just for kicks. 

For instance, I was trying to walk out of one of my accounts and had to change my intended direction due to several customers that were trying to get through on the right side of the entryway.  If it hadn't have been for that change in direction, I wouldn't have literally almost bumped into the parked car with a tag of, you guessed it, California.  Keep in mind that just before I walked out the door I started thinking that my job wasn't too bad after all and that I might be able to hang with it if I adjusted my attitude a little.  Or the fact that I'm driving down I-25 thinking, ok, if I see two of them pass me on the way back that means I should quit my chip gig early so I can focus on finishing my MBA thesis class and the next stage of my "reinvention project."  Yep, I see at least two....and only two. 

Thursday morning I drive into one of my dive stores (and by "dive" I mean bars on the windows, "bad" Longmont neighborhood, etc.) and think it sure would be nice if V (the store clerk) was handing out free burritos today.  Guess what? He did and I didn't have to buy myself lunch. On Friday the owner of one of my 7-11's stops me and says, "so J tells me you're going to go study to be a writer."  I tell him, well maybe, it all depends on a little thing called "acceptance."  He blurts out, "well you certainly have gotten enough material from here to write a full manuscript."  I tell him "oh, it's not just here.  I have more than enough from this entire route."  He replies back "I bet," with a hint of a smirk in his eyes.  I'd love to get started on all the stories I've heard come out of many, many beloved mouths, but that would kind of spoil the suspense of reading those "manuscripts."

My lovely new found artsy friend from one of my Valero stores in Lyons blurts out the other day, "so when are you going to U of "X."  Her son just happens to be a current student there and she just happens to have lived all over the state.  Funny, because she knows I'm considering two other schools.  It's funny that I haven't told her that U of "X" still ranks as my first choice (if there is a choice) in the back of my mind.  I tell her it all depends on that little thing called "acceptance."  She says "oh, but you're a good writer.  And downtown is one of the best places to study how to become one because of the scenery."

And yesterday I was so tired and depressed while I was driving home on highway 34 (because of the fluctuating hormones), thinking to myself that I can't possibly do this.  I can't change.  I can't follow the wishes of my 17 year old self, that chance is gone.  Look what happened to that 23 year old who took a leap of faith-she ended up back home-broke and having to start again from scratch.  This place is secure, it's safe, things always work out because they stay put and there's a safety net.  I have a good job.  I make good money, I don't have to worry about it and I really don't feel like I want to put myself in a position where I have to again.  Then I think, ok show me some kind of impossible sign, perhaps a car with a tag of that state driving by on the other side of the road.  In the middle of Greeley, Colorado what are the odds?  Almost next to impossible.  So, I'm parked at the signal light at an intersection waiting for the left turn signal to turn green.  Guess what drives past on the other side?  Yep, there it was.  Despite my bad mood, I had to laugh.  Pretty soon the Universe is going to get tired of me toying with its "coincidences."

Still, two of the most interesting and intriguing ones have nothing to do with any of this.  Maybe I should have a past lives regression reading to find out the hidden significance, but I think I'll just smile at the mystery of it all from my current existence.  First, there is the mystery of how an almost four month old blog post inspired by a random FB ad seems to suddenly be coming to the spiritual aid of citizens in a flood stricken middle eastern country half a world away.  Second, there's the mystery of a fifteen year old who somewhat nervously composes a letter to someone she doesn't know.  The reason why she composes it (so she thinks) is because she's been forewarned through three degrees of separation that this individual will be departing from a vicarious canvas soon-before any printing press could do the same.  She doesn't remember what the letter said, but what she does remember is including a poem, a sort of randomly picked "piece of advice," so to speak, that didn't seem to fit at all with the rest of the composition.  She wonders if it will ever really reach its intended recipient and why in the world she felt the need to include that "piece of advice."  This week the fifteen year old got her answer (or so she thinks).  Yes, it reached its intended recipient, even if it took eighteen years to do so. 

It's strange how random coincidences like this reveal that what we think of "time" doesn't really exist.  Our higher selves somehow already know what we need, when we'll need it, and whomever else it will need to involve delivering those helpful messages to the part of us that is bound by a linear experience.  A river's water is always really flowing in both directions, it's just a matter of which side of the bridge you're standing on. 

I suppose that's the real joy of "random coincidences"-finding out that they're not really "random" at all.             

Second Chances

The morning that I got into the first car accident that I was responsible for left me crying in intermittent pleas to anyone who might listen.  I had just returned to Florida the day before from a Thanksgiving trip to Colorado and was still experiencing the jet lag of crossing two time zones.  My boss had decided to take an additional two days off to extend her holiday and I was supposed to be running the office solo-a responsibility I had gotten used to looking forward to.  She told me she didn't have to worry when I was in charge, something she hadn't had the luxury of with her last assistant, and I tried to extend my best efforts so that I wouldn't let her down.

I learned that you could never really tell what type of delays you would run into on your commute within the first two weeks of living in the Sunshine State.  I learned to always give myself at least an extra hour just in case.  That morning State Road 33 was still lined with a median of crabgrass and decorative palms just past the signal light that led you to I-4's on-ramp.  There was a lot of space at the end of that median-enough space for someone to park their car there and leave their headlights on, blinding a driver who was trying to make a left turn and couldn't see what was coming up on the stretch of road that curved around the median before it was too late.

My hair was still damp.  I could never get it to fully dry in the morning, even with a blow dryer.  Thick and wavy, but fine, it still became a ball of frizz in the southern humidity.  The officer was nice, taking down the information he needed and explaining to a frightened twenty-something girl why he had to still give her a ticket.  The witness was even nicer, advocating for that girl and persuading the officer to make the idiot who was still sitting in that parked car turn their headlights off.  The other party, an older lady, didn't speak directly to the visibly shaken girl, but she was a lot nicer about the incident than she could have been.  No one was hurt.  No damage to what really mattered.  They were just cars.  They were things that could be repaired.
  

I won't bore you with the details of the "to be continued" episode: a bankrupt car company that can't ship replacement parts, bosses that are more concerned about themselves than their staff, boyfriends who don't answer their phones in time, and an old friend and family members coming to the rescue.  Let's just say that girl was faced with a life changing decision that ended in a chance to break free and start over.
 
Mistakes, failures, and actions we come to regret because something "bad" happened are repairable like those two damaged cars.  Just in a different way.  There's not a set of precise part numbers to order, a tangible estimate of the cost and time that it will take for restoration or a set of insurance policies that will provide what's missing in the interim.

The only things that exist are reflection, resolve and each moment's opportunity to make a decision.  We're not bound by what occurred before-in no way does it seal our fate.  A choice is always waiting.  Often small, hidden and unspoken to perhaps only ourselves, they're there.  They contain a second chance, a renewal, and a reinvention.
 
The only thing missing is the moment where we realize that we're in the middle of viewing what we've been so desperately searching for.  It's the moment where we become filled with a sense of thankfulness and contentment for another chance to breathe.