Chance Meetings

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Yesterday I met someone I used to go to high school with. And just like some twenty years ago it seemed to be a chance meeting right in front of my house...

He is a gentle soul. In our high school days he used to be a socially involved person. Always busy for the greater good, yet never made it to president of the student body. In my mind’s eye I can still see him walking the hallways ~ always organizing something. And although I could grasp the concept of those things that were obviously so important to him ~ even in those days ~ I never quite understood what he was all about.

Then, some twenty years ago he suddenly showed up.

I remember it as a beautiful Summer afternoon. I was enjoying the sunshine ~ watching life go by on the street ~ and suddenly there he was.
He hadn’t changed much. He was still busy organizing things. At that time it never became clear to me whether he was doing those things as a volunteer or if he had made his profession out of organizing events.
I’m not sure how it happened, but before we went downtown to have a drink and catch up, we went by his apartment. It was a sight to behold. Even after all those years I can still feel the astonishment about the amount of ‘stuff’ he had stacked up everywhere...

And yesterday, after another twenty years or so ~ there he was again, right as I parked my car. I’m not certain whether he came through this street in a feeble attempt to meet again ~ or if it was the ‘give-away-store’ a couple of doors down from my house that made him come this way. He had obviously found himself a couple of books someone was giving away.

At first I hardly recognized him. Dressed in casual clothes that looked like they had seen better days; a thick layer of wavy brown hair hanging to well over his shoulders ~ he was the picture of a late 70’s activist; almost like he didn’t belong...

When we greeted each other and talked for a while, I noticed his pinpoint pupils intensely focused on my face, and his inability to move forward to the present from where we left off after drinks, twenty years ago ~ although I have to admit, he had a great recollection of that meeting, what we talked about and things like that.

In a sense it was sad, meeting him like that.
I had always known him organizing things, events. And somehow he has not been able to organize his life  in a way that brings him happiness. He still knows lots of people, he still reads up on what is happening in the world today. Yet he seemed to have given up on himself. A person who seems lost, wandering from one chance meeting to the next...
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Way back when...

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As a teenager I was shy and naive. I was also high sensitive. And the fact that I didn’t speak out much didn’t mean that I didn’t have my opinions ~ it just meant I didn’t share those opinions quite as much or as loudly as my classmates used to do.

Over the years I have discovered that what others saw as me being naive, came from a very different perspective. I have a tendency to just see the good in people. To see what they can be, the things they can achieve ~ in other words, I see the kindness rather than the ‘acting out’. And from that perspective ~ certainly as a teen ~ it was totally beyond me why someone would say something or even tell me something they knew wasn’t true. If it wasn’t true, why would they bother to tell me, or anyone else for that matter?
Apparently because it was fun to see me react seriously to something that ‘everybody knew’ wasn’t true...

It is something that hasn’t changed over the years. I still see the good in people, how they are meaning well; how they are trying to do the right thing. It is still beyond me why anyone would state something they know to be untrue.
What has changed is that I have found a way to distinguish between the two. To still see all the things that can be ~ yet to also see the situation as it really is. To take the other person seriously; and yet to also know when what they are telling me is not quite the whole truth. In which case it well can be their personal truth, but it may not be a factual truth or ever become truth to me...

In a sense I have finally learned how my high sensitivity can be helpful to me in those situations. Something that makes me far less ‘naive’.

Something that has changed is that by now I have learned to speak out more ~ even in groups. I now enjoy giving lectures and workshops. And I have a lot of fun with my Dutch language biweekly radio show on internet radio.

What is interesting to me is that some things, some perspectives seem to have stayed the same since those long ago teenage years, as I would have thought that I had outgrown pretty much all of it by now...

A couple of years ago I ran in to one of my teachers from those days. We had a little chat, when he suddenly commented that he had admired me so much as I had always followed my own values and had refused to cave under peer pressure ~ even as the shy teenager I was way back when...
I have to admit; I had never quite looked at it that way.
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Space

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The word ‘space’ is one of those words that can be subject to a lot of different interpretations...

There is space as in non-terrestrial space. The universe. That area that is beyond the reach of our physical experience. The space that people are supposedly visiting when they are not grounded; i.e. spacey.

Then there is space in nature. And while nature can provide us with ‘wide open spaces’, sometimes nature’s spaces are a lot smaller ~ yet they are always ‘just right’. If we let nature do its thing, it will always come up with enough space for that particular environment, that unique ecosystem to flourish in. And these untouched spaces in nature then find a balance and a sense of peace that indeed gives each species in that environment exactly the space they need to prosper...

It takes an act from us humans encroaching upon that space to change the balance in such a way that suddenly the existing space seems to become too small to support all of its inhabitants.
A part of that is because we just don’t like the animals who occupied the space before us. Few people are fond of ants, mosquitoes, mice, and rats. Let alone snakes, coyotes, foxes etc. So as soon as we have our eyes set on a certain space, often we don’t necessarily aim to coexist; we aim to take over. To create our own space, our own balance, our own sense of peace...

Nature is something that is ‘out there’ ~ in here it is our space.
And how much space that is depends on the priorities of the individual person. Some people feel comfortable in relatively small spaces like a studio apartment. A small space like that could make other people totally unhappy ~ the ideal space for them involves a multiple bedroom, multiple bathroom house with a garden; and at least a two car garage. They perhaps crave space to move around in, space that they can share with others...

The closest space there is to us is our very personal space. The space that we need to keep our unique, individual energy flowing in the direction of the expression of our greatest potential. The space each and every one of us needs on a core level.

For most of us the minimal size of that space is about as tall as we are, and when we spread our arms out wide it reaches from fingertip to fingertip. Through that elemental, core space can we express ourselves, achieve our goals and live a fulfilling life in balance with all that is around us ~ from the tiniest blade of grass to the universe...
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Our Belongings

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Do you feel tied down by your belongings, by the things you have worked hard for to be able to buy for yourself ~ but now that you have them they take so much of your time and energy to maintain that you are wondering if it is worth it. Or perhaps even how you got there?

Are your the things you own in a sense tools that make your life easier?

Or do you feel that your possessions are just ‘things’; ‘stuff’ that is easy to walk away from if ever you felt the need to do so ~ without ever giving it a second thought?

It seems that looking at our belongings from a perspective that asks ourselves why we own them can be an enlightening experience! It does require to be honest about it. It also helps to keep an open mind...

Yet if we do that, we may find that there are things that at one time in our lives were things we had worked toward, saved our pennies for ~ until finally we could afford to have them! Making that item a milestone as much as anything. A token of our achievements.
And sometimes we may find that while that item has long since been replaced with a newer, easier to use, or better quality version ~ or even with something all together different that serves us better whichever (logical) way you look at it; it is hard to toss this old thing we worked so hard for to get it...
Somehow our emotional satisfaction of getting it at the time, still overrides the logical decision to either keep it or toss it...

For many of us these emotional attachments to (some of the) things we own make it hard to ‘clean house’. To release the things that have outlived their usefulness. And in doing so making space for things that can serve us better given the point in our lives we are at right now.
In a sense one could say that it is through these emotional attachments a shift has occurred where we don’t own our belongings, but our belongings have come to own us...

The moment we decide to release those things from our lives that are n longer useful to us, yet are still filling up our cupboards and garages ~ we have a tendency to not only create actual space in our homes, but also open up our personal, or core space for new experiences.

And while there is nothing wrong with owning lots of things ~ every once in a while it is a good idea to evaluate if we are owning them, or whether they have come to own us. In which case it might be time to release them...
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“It was the best thing that ever happened to me...”

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Have you ever looked back at an event in your life that seemed to be something pretty disastrous at the time ~ and yet, when you look back at it you have this sense that “It was the best thing that ever happened to me...” ??

Events that can have that effect almost always were unpleasant, even painful at the time. Whether it involved physical pain, embarrassment, emotional pain, a set of circumstances with no obvious way out ~ no matter which way you looked at it at the time; it was not a good thing.

Yet life goes on. And eventually things change.
Perhaps because you find yourself choosing a new direction. Or setting new and different goals for yourself. You may have found that there were things you thought were important in your life that you could easily do without. And by the same token perhaps you discovered things that were far more important to you than you gave them credit for up to that point.

It usually takes time to discover that whatever it was that happened to you was truly a life-changing event... It has made you look at life differently. It has encouraged you to walk your own path ~ perhaps even to take a stand; to draw a line in the sand.
And years later you may find that you are a stronger, better, wiser person because of it.
At that point you may say: “It was the best thing that ever happened to me...” ~ and mean it!

There is one little caveat though...
In order to permit something to work out in this manner it requires that we allow ourselves to move on from whatever event has happened in the past. That, instead of holding on to something terrible that has happened to us, we acknowledge that it indeed did happen (after all there is nothing to be gained from denying the truth), and we move on from there.
Holding on to a (perceived) negative event in our lives may well hold us prisoner in an energy we never wanted to be in in the first place! So let it go!
We live, we learn, and we move on.

As we move on, we open to new, positive experiences.
We look at the world around us with new, wiser eyes.
Seeing things we may not have seen before.
Connecting with life and the people we hold near and dear on a deeper level.
And often choosing a personal path that is more inspiring to us...
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