Anne Lamott is one of my favorite authors.  Her words
are luscious and her descriptions of her life and
experience are both heartbreakingly honest and
hysterically funny.  So when I saw that she was going
to be a speaker in April at a conference in New York
sponsored by the Omega Institute - one of my favorite
authors in one of my favorite cities sponsored by one
of my other favorite places AND on my birthday! - well,
I just figured it was meant to be.  I knew seeing Anne
would be a pretty good present I could give myself. 
What I found though was that she was actually the
bow on the top of a pile of wisdom and inspiration
gifted to me by the other speakers.

My first gift was a gift of awareness at just how much I
have conformed to my environment.  Iyanla Vanzant
was leading the first workshop I attended.  If you’ve
never heard her, she is dynamic.  She also wears all
white flowing gowns and started the class by having
everyone dance.  Right.  8:30am on a Saturday in
New York City?!  Now, had this been 8 months ago
and I was still in school in California, then I probably
wouldn’t have minded nor thought anything about it. 
So it was interesting to see how quickly I had
morphed back into a cynical East Coaster!

Next I, by accident, got a gift of learning a lesson.  I
had misread the conference program and thought that
the events on Friday evening were all part of an
optional pre-conference intensive, which required a
separate fee.  But when I heard people buzzing on
Saturday morning about Mia Farrow’s emotional talk
on her work with Darfur the night before, I quickly
realized I had blown it!  My gift was my opportunity to
practice self-forgiveness and to learn to stay in the
moment - both of which I was finding hard to do as
my mind would drift off during other speakers,
wondering how her talk was, what else I had missed
and how could I have been so dumb as to have
misread the program.  This one seems to be a gift
that keeps giving!

The conference was entitled “Being Fearless” and
speaker after speaker emphasized that fear is nothing
to ignore or to run from, but to embrace and move
through.  It was shown that we all have it and when we
can release the stories we carry about it, we can
become the powerful, amazing persons just waiting to
emerge within us.  An analogy Noah benShea told
illustrated this so well for me:  Suppose you had 12
horses that had to carry all your faith and your fears.  If
11 of these horses carried your fears and only 1 had
your faith, which would you put in front?  You wouldn’t
want any of the eleven to lead - they would go
nowhere.  But if you put that one horse with faith in
front, it would lead the others on the way.  

I heard Reverend Michael Beckwith proclaim that
vision without action is fantasy and that action without
vision is chaos.  I heard Robert Kennedy Jr. give
example after example of the travesties of justice and
mutilation of the environment occurring in the US
today and was at the same time shocked, horrified,
and inspired to action.  I heard Zev Kadash share a
moving and unbelievably terrifying true story of his
experience as a child in a concentration camp who
was one of the Jews on “Schindler’s List” and was
awed by the strength of the human spirit to survive. 

In short, I was totally inspired and ready to sell all my
earthly possessions, move to a commune, eat only
organic raw foods and meditate for hours on end - all
with a smile on my face and love in my heart.

And then Carolyn Myss, in her irascible, no nonsense
manner, said something that shocked me back to
reality.  She said that what you don’t want to do is to
keep searching for your purpose.  What you want to do
is to ask to wake up and be madly in love with the
people in your life and where you are in life.  It is the
old adage of not having what you want, but wanting
what you have.  And by doing so, you move through the
fear and distractions into your being. 

I realized just how masterful I am at creating
distractions to the fear in my life.  I’ll start another
project, another hobby, another relationship - anything
to avoid having to stay put and address the fear.  And I
also saw how rich and powerful my life is and can be
if I could learn to live it fully. 

Anne Lamott concluded the conference with some
words on everyday courage that gave me both pause
and laughter.  Afterwards she was signing books and
I got the chance to meet her and wish her a happy
birthday, as she had shared that hers had been a
couple days earlier.  When I told her that it was my
birthday too and this was gift to myself, she
commented that there are a lot of powerful people
born around this time.  I smiled, and knew in my
heart that I was indeed one of them.