Attaining a New Truth through Love

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I’d want to read with her at Seattle’s Salon of Shame.  It’s a performance event where people read aloud from journals of old.  Embarrassing shit, ridiculous shit, on display.  I thought why not?  I pulled the writing boxes out of my storage shed, and journeyed through my adolescence into adulthood.  I was blown away at my younger self’s voice.  What was supposed to be embarrassing just felt hard.  I wanted to reach through the years, and just sit with my younger vulnerable self, to be there in support.

There were musings of things that inspire me still, the impetus to write in the first place.  I have notes about leading our schools first “Stellar Society” – a community to celebrate the overlap of psychology, spirituality and the mysteries of life—and smoking weed (let’s be honest – I was a teenager!).  Exploring what it meant to be a self in partnership.  I wrote about the edge of safety as the place where growth happened.  I wrote about code switching, and wondered how you could be the same self in the presence of different communities.  I felt divided, unable to reach one central place. 

I knew the role of longing and desire in transformative work.  I loved the act of wanting, and understood that attainment wasn’t a panacea for all things.  And yet, I wanted to be a person who enjoyed the longing, and then achieved what I’d longed for anyhow.  To celebrate both the desire and attainment. 

But a lot of my writing was just tragic.  I started counting how often I saw the word “unattainable,” in my writing.  For some reason, I decided that what I wanted wasn’t allowed.  It was like I lived in a world where every desire of mine was equivalent to befriending Albert Einstein or dating Ani DiFranco.  I knew I was talented, I knew I was smart.  But I in my mind, somehow, I was a failure before I started.  The end was simply too far to reach.

Over the past twenty years, the word “unattainable” has dropped from my vocabulary.  Age is evidence of experience, if nothing more.  I have thrashed and rebuilt myself so many times.  I was valedictorian of one of the best schools in the US, I found my way to Egypt to study with a Priestess, I came back, rebuild my career in a completely different field to include performance art, coaching, consulting, and travel.  After hitting bottom, applying for food stamps, I now own my own home, and I have walked into relationship and love in ways I’d never anticipated. I have accomplished things I didn’t know were possible. 

And yet, that idea is still under the surface, the idea that things are just Out of my Reach.  If you know me, you know I can get things done.  But what you might not know is how I have had this secret program in the background - this wound that what I love is not going to love me back, that what I want in the world is not for me. 

I hustle.  I effort.  I hustle more.  I run towards a goal, and catalyze the people and passion required for it.  My goals glow like embers of a fire I forgot I had lit years ago.  And the more I effort, the more these embers dim.  It can feel like the same bellows meant to fan the flame blow it out. 

These journals made it clear.  This is an old story.  I know part of it is about growing up a latchkey kid in the 80s.  I know part of it is that I was so self-sufficient, so independent, no one felt I needed any help.  Still true today.  Beyond my asthma, or perhaps because of it, I made a great effort to cause little drama, few waves.  I became the caretaker, low-maintenance, never asking for help.  

But what I’m discovering now is that there’s something else to explore here.  If you leave your flame in the ember stage, you don’t have to commit to anything.  If you never build a fire-pit, you don’t have to tend it.  You don’t have to risk failing, or perhaps more frightening, you don’t have to risk succeeding.  There will never be rejection if there is never risk.  And you can kinda love everyone if you don’t truly love anyone.  You can kinda succeed at everything, if you don’t put your faith in any one thing. 

The word “unattainable” was a coping mechanism for me.  I wanted a lot - still do.  But I struggle choosing.  And it’s not always clear if I’m ready for a given path.  So for me, to stand in my power, it’s as important to say, yes, this for now.  I’m not certain, not 100%.  But I’m going to stay in this lane, and follow the arrow of this compass, with loec.  A lot of my life has been driving in circles.  So I’m going to keep the course for longer than is comfy, to see if I can grow more deeply.

Some people are fixed in their direction, they know what they want, and they rarely deviate from that.  But for those of us who aren’t fixed, clear, it’s important to check the process of choosing, to see if you are avoiding the flames of your power by living in that uncertainty.  If you want to be more thank kinda amazing, you have to take more thank kinda risks.  That’s how you attain, land, on big shit.  There is no right, no perfect, no one decision that makes you less you.  When we lead with love, the big dreams are attainable, one choice at a time, one compassionate, graceful move after another.