It took until today for me to shed a tear about the Haiti earthquake.  This was extremely disturbing to me as this is such a horrific situation: why on earth was I not more upset about it?  Me, whose eyes well up as I watch TV commercials, was not crying over a real human tragedy.  It was just baffling.

This morning I was watching a news report and there was a young girl from the US who had been in Haiti doing volunteer work.  She had been trapped in debris and had lost her leg but was back in the US now getting treatment.  Her optimism, joy of living, and desire to get back to help were inspirational.  And then I started to cry.  In thinking about it, watching pictures of the devastation were just too surreal for me to get my head around.  Logically I knew this was real, that these were real people in real desperate situations, but it just looked too much like scenes from a movie to me.  I remember my ex-husband saying the same thing when he saw one of the planes hit the World Trade Center.  The mind just can’t -or won’t – register that kind of disaster.

So it came back once again to a single individual to break through the barrier I’d unconsciously built to protect some part of myself.  Someone I could imagine being my daughter or a neighbor.  Someone whose purity of spirit shone through all the words and sounds and pictures of the past few days.  Someone who modeled for me what I wish for myself: optimism, joy of living and a desire to help others.  May her spirit be an inspiration to us all and may it help us to help those who need it most.

Inspiration can come from the strangest places.  Today my inspiration was a combination of a Nissan Dealership, Sly Stone – and me!  Let me explain….

A few weeks ago I was playing my ipod in my car and went to crank up Sly & The Family Stone”s “Dance to the Music”.  I heard the lyrics “All we need is a drummer,
for people who only need a beat”….and that was about all I heard.  Apparently I am someone who needs more than a beat in order to enjoy/dance to my music.  A trip to the local Nissan dealership uncovered the fact that my radio was defective and they needed to order me a new one.  Which brings me to today.

As I sat in the Nissan dealership awaiting the installation of my new radio, I was working on a post for today’s blog.  I must say, it was rather dreary.  I have not been in the most stellar of mindsets of late and it was, frankly, a bit of a downer to read.  I finished the piece and proceeded on to the next task, as the repair personnel were graciously giving me plenty of time to do everything I had brought with me (which at the time I thought would be way too much stuff).  This next activity involved editing past pieces I had written and will be compiling into a book.  As I read piece after piece, I found my spirits lifting and was amazed.  It was not that I don’t think I am capable of writing anything inspirational or motivational, but this was me who wrote them.  You’d think I’d know what they said.  But as Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.  Truly, when I had written those pieces I was in a vastly different level of consciousness than the present moment.

Finally my car was ready and I decided to test the radio by listening to Sly Stone again.  This time I started with “Everybody is a Star”.  When I heard the lyric “I love you for who you are, not the one you feel you need to be”, it made me stop what I was doing.  Obviously it was what I needed to hear at that moment, as I’ve heard it hundreds of times before and it didn’t strike me the same way then.  I know a woman whose husband is Sly Stone’s PR agent – a VERY full time job!  Believe me, with the stories I’ve heard, I would never think of Sly as a source of inspiration!

The one thing I did mention in my discarded post (which I assure you, you’d be grateful I didn’t post…) was that I was starting a gratitude journal, now into the new year.  I find that regardless where my mind may be, taking the time to write down 5-10 things daily for which I am grateful really helps pull me out of my funk.  I am grateful to have 3 things t o add to my list already!

It was those little girls singing the National Anthem at the Texas Tech game that got me started.  I am a total sucker for really talented kids.  OK, who am I kidding – I’m a sucker for kids performing anything anywhere!  I was in this “altered state” when I read a Facebook entry gushing over our little community theatre production of Beauty & The Beast.  I should have known better.

As I decided that Sunday would be a day of “want to do”, rather than “need to do”, I decided to take in the final performance and roped my daughter into going with me.  Somehow going to a local production by yourself when you have no family members in it is just short of pathetic.  Its kind of like stopping in to the elementary school holiday program after your kids are grown.  Actually, going to one of those programs would probably have the same effect on me.  Again, I should have known.

The auditorium was packed – a sold out performance.  Evidently the buzz around town was effective.  It was also the place to be if you were under 5 years old, especially if you could dress up like a princess to boot.  We got 2 of the last seats in the back and I settled in with only a slightly jaded attitude.  After all, I’d been to many, many of these productions and knew that although they were always well done, they also were always slightly “charming”.  In other words, there was usually a key role played by someone who, if they didn’t live in town, probably would not have the part.  We support our own, regardless.

It was oh, maybe 2 minutes into the first act when the tears started.  The girl who played Belle was, I believe, a Disney plant.  She looked like Anne Hathaway and sang like, well, Belle!  The beast was big and growley, Lumiere was French and flirty, and Chip was the cutest thing you’d ever seen.  I just could not stop crying.  Thank goodness it was dark in there or my daughter would have been mortified to be seen with me.  Even I was getting a little embarrassed by my over the top reaction.

What was it, besides perhaps raging hormones, that triggered this tear fest?  Well, it could have been memories of watching the VHS tape of “Beauty” about 7 million times with my first born and picturing his very serious and intense look in trying to take it all in.  It could have been when they announced they were dedicating the show to Jerry Orbach, the voice of Lumiere in the movie, and who’s son and grandchildren who live in our town accepted an award on his behalf.  It could have been watching kids I’ve known since they were tots up there doing an amazing job and hoping to be the next Tom Cruise (he too started in our town).

But what it always is, whether its watching a school play, a 4th of July parade or a video of kids singing at a basketball game, is seeing an authentic soul doing what they are meant to do.   A child who is singing their heart out because they love to sing gets me everytime.  Seeing anyone doing what they love without fear or concern about what others will think is to me like witnessing the purity of the human spirit.  They have stepped in the full light of their being and it touches me to my core.  I come away inspired and energized, ready to peel off one more protective layer and let my light shine perhaps a little brighter than I allowed it to before.

I’m grateful, especially at the start of this national week of gratitude, for the reminder that it is more than ok to be all that I can be.  And the reinforcement that our children are indeed our teachers.  And just for good measure, I’m off to watch Susan Boyle on the Today Show now.  Get the tissues ready!

When I was a freshman in college, the cheery lemon cream cement block walls of my dorm room were covered with posters resplendent with inspirational sayings.  My favorite was the one with the butterfly motif that said “If you love something, let it go.  If it comes back, it was meant to be.”  It had that touch of heartbreak and melodrama with a smidgen of optimism that resonated with my 18 year old view of life.  Ah, to be a martyr for love – a truly noble calling!

 While I did become the Joan of Arc for the lovelorn for a time, letting go with practiced painful panache, I didn’t seem to ever get that second part of the saying – the coming back part.  In my mind, the coming back was a guy realizing he had made the biggest mistake of his life, returning with flowers and begging for forgiveness, at which point I would immediately declare all was forgiven and we would ride off into the sunset together.  Surprisingly it just never happened.  I came to write off that adage as a pithy attempt at, well, selling posters to 18 year old girls.  But what I never understood about it before was that it wasn’t about the eternal hoping to get the prize – it was about the letting go of the attachment to it.  Now, just a couple of years later, I’m beginning to get the message. 

There have been many things in my life in the last few years I’ve had to learn to release:   some literally, some emotionally, some mentally.  In a lot of cases I harbored a secret wish that they would come back to me.  But the amazing thing that I have come to realize is that when I release not only the situation, but more importantly, my attachment to the outcome, things have a way of working out.  How many times have I plotted and planned how something should work out, only to be disappointed?  And conversely, how many times have I had an incredible time when I was able to “go with the flow”?  It is not that I should give up the “prep work” – it’s the expectation of the result that needs the release. 

In starting my business there has been a lot of prep work that needed to be done.  I’d never done anything like this before and had a vision, but not necessarily an expectation of how it would all come together.  I was truly in the flow of things and I was swept along in an amazing fashion with doors opening left and right.  It was such an example to me of doing the next right thing, letting go, and seeing what the process placed next in my path.  I was living and loving the process, without the preconceived notion of how it should or would be.  

So you’d think I learned my lesson.   

I have come to believe that life affords you ALL sorts of opportunities to try out your new skills.  The next time I faced a challenge, instead of doing what I had JUST done – taking the next step and trusting the process – I somehow decided I now KNEW how this was supposed to work.  I think by now you know how that turned out.   

So after realizing once again that perhaps that way doesn’t work, I’ve come up with a new mantra:  How can I serve?  At least for today I’ve realized that what I do is not about me.  I am the messenger, the conduit, the enabler of something beyond me.  I have unique skills and talents that allow me to bring things to fruition for which I am grateful.  I’ve come to realize that serving means utilizing whatever skills I have, regardless of any judgment I may have put on them in the past.  I use to think that serving meant a huge commitment but now see it could be as simple as making a sales clerk smile.  I just never know how something I do, no matter how insignificant it may seem to me, could affect someone’s life.   

I’m still an optimist and still the person that wants to makes things happen.  Those are part of my gifts.  Martyrdom?  Been there, done that.  Today that saying on my college poster speaks to me not of martyrdom but of freedom.  I’m letting go of rigid expectations that took up so much energy and space in my life in the past.  And who know what I just might get in return.  I’m looking forward to it…without expectation!