Living Happiness

My Lunch With An Egghead. It was Like a Bad Train-Wreck. When the Past Comes Up and Smacks You in the Ass. These were all titles I had thought of for this blog post today because this is what happened to me last week. I had lunch with an egghead. It was like a bad train wreck. I felt like my past had come up and smacked me on the ass.

Positively Present wrote a wonderful post recently where she described her own confrontation with a painful, not-so-happy past. In complete honesty, she shared her panicked feelings, the rush of blood to her face, the sweaty palms, the utter anxiety of the event. And then she proceeded to tell us how she navigated her way through it and managed to find joy and acceptance in who she is now.

Well, this was another one of the moments of synchronicity where I read the post (the first post I’d read since being back) and thought, “What the heck?! Was PP at lunch with me last week?” And I even told her so.

Last week, I indeed had lunch with my past. Well, with an ex-boyfriend actually. Who looked remarkably like an egghead. And it was a traumatic thing. Frightening. Soul-jarring. And also a bit revolting, I have to say.

I found myself sitting in a booth across from what my future could have been if I’d continued on the path I was on 6 years ago, and that glimpse into a Future That Wasn’t scared the bejeezus out of me. I found myself taking deep breaths between my gulps of Diet Coke and thinking, “OMG! What a narrow miss!”

Have you seen those old Hollywood movies where the main character is given the chance to see his life if he’d made (or hadn’t made) this or that choice? It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol come to mind. I used to watch them and think, “If only that could really happen. Wouldn’t it be great?”

Well … Fate, the Universe, God decided that, yes, it would be great and gave me that chance last week. They allowed me to glimpse myself down The Road of What Could Have Been from the safe and comfy vantage point of Where I Actually Am. And it was eye-opening.

It is rare in life that we are given this opportunity. I don’t think it is all that common to be allowed to see The Road Not Taken. Most of the time we simply trust that when we are finally moving in alignment with ourselves and our purpose and, as some would say, the Divine’s plan for our life, that this is sufficient reward. We can often look upon our present life (even with its sorrows) and appreciate the joy that permeates it because we have chosen to live in harmony rather than in dissonance with the world around us. We have come far enough to know that this present life is far better than we could have dreamed … and is, thankfully, many blessed steps away from where we once were. This is reassurance enough.

This is how I have felt, too. Periodically I have stepped back over the years, paused at a certain point along my mountain trail, and taken stock of how far I’ve come. I remember earlier parts of the path, difficult ledges I had to climb, parts of the trail where the path seemed to disappear entirely, and I can see the lessons learned. I can see how, even when I didn’t think I was moving, I was still somehow climbing – up, uP, UP! These are things that I reflect on in these moments of pause. They renew me and encourage me to keep climbing.

But last week, I felt like I was truly given the chance to do more than appreciate the circumstances that had led me to this place. I was allowed to see a tiny bit of where a life of not making these choices might have led me. And in that glimpse, I was still wandering around the bottom of the mountain, searching for a way up, trying one path and getting discouraged and dropping back down again. Fearful of the mountain. Fearful of myself.

As I sat across from this ex-boyfriend, these thoughts were not going through my head yet. Mostly I was still in the state of “There but for the grace of God go I.” But when I got home and had the time to reflect on my very strong emotional reaction to this encounter, these are the thoughts that came to me.

I find myself a strange mixture of relieved, elated, and sorrowful. Relieved that I did choose to do things differently. Elated that I (with God’s help and the community of people around me) have begun climbing the mountain and have come so far. Sorrowful that my ex-boyfriend is still struggling to begin his climb.

It would be easy for me to be judgmental. And, to be honest, I do have to fight a bit not to be. I don’t have a lot of patience with people who continue to choose the wrong paths despite all of the signposts all around them that spell out what the good paths are. But that’s a side road we’re not going to take today. What I realize is that the best thing I can do is to be there to support and encourage this individual when he decides to get serious about climbing the mountain. I did not get this far by myself. I got here because I had helpers and fellow climbers all along the way who gave me guidance, advice, tips, and love.

My glimpse down What Might Have Been Lane was not just a technique of the gods to bolster my pride and hubris. No, I believe its purpose was altogether different: to teach me that rather than stand in my elevated spot, looking down on and casting stones, perhaps it was time I, too, helped someone begin climbing the mountain.

Warmest wishes today,

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I was sitting recently, talking to a friend about the brokenness that we can experience in our lives. All of us experience this at one time or another and feel broken ourselves–flawed, messed up, perhaps even irredeemably so. We’re bruised, scarred and knotted, and we wonder: Can any good come of this?

Evelyn Lim at Attraction Mind Map wrote a lovely post recently that addressed this issue: she shared with her readers the Indian folktale “The Tale of the Water Bearer’s Pots,” sometimes known as “The Cracked Pot.” In this story, we are reminded that beauty can come of our flaws, that our imperfections do not have to mean that all is lost. The story of the broken vessel seems to say: Don’t lose heart. Even your flaws and chips and cracks can be used toward good.

I have taken comfort in this promise myself, glad that even in my not-so-wholeness there’s a chance that even my chips and flaws might somehow allow for love and beauty to bloom anyway.

But after talking with my friend, I began to wonder if there is more to the story, if perhaps we may sometimes stop too soon in our acceptance of it. The reason I say so is this question that began to gnaw at me: At what point is a flawed vessel no longer serving its purpose?

My friend and I puzzled over this together because both of us had encountered our own cracked pots recently, people so frequently broken and not so put back together that our interactions with them had become dangerous–cutting us, pricking us, shattering and wounding us. We had reached a point when we said of these interactions, “The fool here is me … for continuing to pick up this vessel.” And we had stepped back and said, “No more.”

The cracked pot no longer held water. We put it back on the shelf, out of reach, far from prying hands, far from any hands at all. But then … what purpose does it, can it, serve?

I began to wonder what bearing this had on me. When are my flaws admissible character traits, and when are they liabilities? Isn’t it in my best interest to eliminate as many of them as I can?

Growing up in a strict religious household, the response to these questions was most often Jesus’ admonishment to “Be perfect as I am perfect.” Wow. No pressure there. Be perfect? Nooo problem.

But as I got older, I came to understand that perfect as it was used in that scripture did not mean perfect the way I was taught to conceive of it: without fault or flaw. Instead perfect meant whole, complete. Ah. That made more sense. But how does one accomplish this wholeness? And what does it mean to be more complete?

Maybe it means taking all of the pieces of my life that have been chipped away and fragmented over the years and allowing them to be arranged again to reflect my truest nature which, at the end of the day, is really the divine nature at the heart of me. Maybe it means being a bit like Humpty Dumpty, but instead of remaining shattered, I am “put back together again.” This is a process of re-membering.

To “remember who we are” is, in a very real sense, to engage in the process of letting ourselves (and others) put the pieces of us back together again. When we remember who we are, we remember our essence, our purpose. We ask ourselves the question, “Who am I?” and in answering the question, we come to understand what the shape of this vessel, the shape of us, is meant to be.

It’s important to note that the process of re-membering is not a solitary one. We do not re-member ourselves in isolation but in the context of community. There is a point at which we have done all we can do to re-form ourselves, to file away our rough edges so that we do not shatter or wound those around us, and it is then we can allow ourselves to be shaped and formed by the loving hand of others, those who can see our inner beauty and help us achieve our purpose.

It’s great to be back.
Peace be with you.