Spirit In Gear

True Credibility

There are those who believe you must find your credibility before people will want to read what you write and what we want you to understand is that when you tune in to who you really are that's where your true credibility comes from----and that's attractive to anyone who's a vibrational match to it. In other words anyone who finds you not credible, wouldn't understand what you've written anyway.
- Abraham

It's been over two weeks since my last post.  I wonder to myself why I haven't felt moved to write ( my inner censor not withstanding).  A few minutes ago a special friend sent me this quote.  As I read the words in the quote, I find my courage emerging from the shadows. 

Now it's okay to share with you what I've been grappling with of late to understand.  In my middle-aged years I sense the passage of life more deeply.  Themes of loss seem to dominate at times.  In the space of several weeks, my cousin died unexpectedly; my best friend's sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died within weeks; another friend's mother died over the weekend, fanning the flames of grief over my own mother's death 18 months ago.  I still miss my Mom every day.

Living several states away from friends and family, we can't make it to all the weddings and funerals.  I feel torn about that.  I call my 83 yr old Dad up on Father's Day, wishing I could be with him.  He no longer has an endless number of Fathers Days ahead of him.

I experience an identity crisis of sorts.  I ask myself why I live where I live.  Am I creating enough of a positive impact to justify living here in South Carolina?  Am I allowed to live my life the way I see fit?  Will our adult daughters ever live close to us again?  Will I ever move off the topic of middle-age?

Amidst these loss-related issues, my husband and I laugh and relax with good friends over the weekend; my business partner and I enjoy a recent, tremendous business success; and I move through my day without getting needlessly stuck.  It just goes to show you that life goes on side by side with the angst.

Raising the above questions brings both discomfort, and relief.  Unlike the game show, Jeopardy, answers usually don't first show up without a question to pair up with.  Now that I've tossed these questions out to the great Universe, I can wait.  The answers I need will find me in time, or lead to better questions!

 

Living Big in a Small Venue

Blogging at its best creates space for dialogue between people.  It invites visitors to step in for a bit, shed their status as stranger, and learn from each other. 

Sometimes blogging leads to extended conversations beyond the post, such as the flurry of email conversations (the deep and profound kind) between Dick Richards, Dan Oestreich, and me, following our recent posts on age.  I have been wowed by the learning and insights that continue from conversations with these wise and soulful men.

Recently I've been gratified to engage in a similar email conversation with Marcy Goldman over the same topic of life in middle age.  Marcy and I have known each other for several years as subscribers to each other's newsletters.  Marcy lives in Montreal and I live in South Carolina.  We've never met in person.  She is a successful pastry chef and baker with several published cookbooks.  Marcy is also a writer whose essays I devour with delight and sinful pleasure.

The title of this post, "Living Big in a Small Venue," comes from an essay Marcy wrote, entitled Go West Young Baker.  I excerpted a portion of this essay below to highlight what we can all learn in blazing our own trails, knowing we can't all be at the top.  Without further adieu I give you Marcy -

There is no middle class anymore –there is A list and the rest of the world – in a manner of speaking. You are either splatted or saturating the media for your brief expose or a larger than life personality (for good or bad) directing the ultimate reality show: This Life, These Times. For me, as a participant who needs to feel like the creative frontier is manageable, this means hacking off a tiny hunk of gold and mining it with the love and care things that are small but precious deserve. It is also a way to survive, but to also thrive and regenerate. Between not making the best sourdough in the world and Pillsbury Dinner Rolls, there are eons of choices and levels in-between. Knowing who and where you are and what makes you happy (which is what makes you successful) is cogent, savvy stuff. It offers me stillness in a racing world.

Similarly, the frontier of self-hood can be overwhelming – the roles we all have, the hats we wear and the techno era has made our to-do list formidable. What’s great about Endless Possibility and Unmet Potential is that it is creative and exciting. What is bad about it is that you never arrive. There is no finish line and that clamor of possibility segues into a contemporary cocktail – that unhealthy mix of two parts chatter of saturation and one part chaos of stimulation overload.

It’s taken me all this time to figure out a personal solution: in order to feel arrived, I mindfully have opted to lasso only half the moon; sometimes, only a fraction of a star. I keep to ‘the program’ whether it is a spat of domestic tasks or writing deadlines. Not always exciting stuff but it does offer the reward of that sense of being finished with something. Completing something, even small, results in serenity which spawns a bit of clarity and focus. This focus in turn offers a bit of new energy. Now order and focus don’t sound like the touchstones of creativity but they are. I do not have to write my novel all today or bake up every Definitive Butter Cookie all today. The bits and pieces I manage contribute to a mosaic, which becomes a mural. In the meantime, I am engaged fully – and revelling in a certain soulful harmony.

I haven’t stopped wanting to discover the frontier. I just no longer try to chase the horizon – lest I lose my energy or discover it to be, which the horizon often is, a mirage – sometimes, not even a mirage of my own making.  

The story I tell myself lately, which is working (lately) is that I have opted to ‘live big in a small venue.’ Thing is, it was never about getting there; it is indeed, about the journey West of my own spirit. No more huge map with expansive borders. It is now about carefully going over where I have been, lovingly coloring in and shading the places I want to tarry over, making art of the details, not enlarging the outline or challenging the borderlands. 

The greater frontier was never 'out there'. There is no there, there. The greater frontier, resides, as it always has, within. It is the landscape of my own passions and those passions, map or not, I can meet up with anytime I like. I know the terrain like the back of my hand.

Here’s to living big in a small venue, inventing frontiers in your own backyard, and forging your own trail. If I see you on the trail west, please wave. I will tip my toque and bid you Godspeed.  Meet you at the A-Ok Corral, where the biscuits are hot, the coffee is scorching, and there is always an extra place set at the table.

[Photo Credit of Marcy:  Mark Fowler]

More on Life in the Middle-Aged Lane

This week I donated "Betsy," my '96 Camry, to a charity.  I felt emotional pangs as she was towed away.  Betsy wears her age well.  She still has life left in her.  I hope her next owner appreciates the value she brings.  I have never owned a car prior to Betsy that served me with such dependability, style, and economy.  Betsy, at 13 years, still gets better gas mileage around town than my spanking new '09 Honda Accord.

I can't help but think that Betsy provides a metaphor for my life in middle age.  My place on life's stage shifts to the background.  I still have a lot of life left in me, but my priorities no longer center on achievement and career, or being at the front of the stage.

In The Gifts of Age Part 2 I confess my secret desire to go gray (but I'm a "silver" wannabe) when I turn 60 in the summer of 2011.  My hair, thanks to my parents' genes, is one of my best features, and wears an attractive color via my talanted hairdresser.  Going gray goes against the cultural current, but resonates with my inner being. 

Dick Richards asked me "Why wait til 60?"   Ah, Dick, you have no idea what's involved.  First of all, it will take at least 1.5 years to grow out the permanent hair color.  While my gray roots grow out, temporary color will be used.   I also need the time to gather my courage!  To get used to the idea that other people will judge me as less attractive, and to be okay with that.

I want to try gray hair on and see what it feels like.  It will complement the lines around my eyes that I have earned from laughing.  I sense more freedom to be me.  Take it or leave it, folks!  No apologies!  And if I don't like my gray hair, I know what to do about it.

This morning I read this quote, which captures my feelings (don't you just love how synchronicity works?):

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day.  This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned.
- Agatha Christie

Stay tuned:  My middle-aged Inner Goddess has only just begun to emerge.

The Gifts of Age - Part 2

The second part of a two-part post co-authored by Deb Call, Dan Oestreich, and
Dick Richards, with Dick narrating.  Read Part 1.

Whatever we believe to be our gifts of age, it seems impossible to conclude anything but that they derive from experience. This is true not only for the gifts mentioned in Part I -- freedom from making judgments, inner confidence, acceptance and fruition -- but for so many others unmentioned so far, such as wisdom, peace of mind, continued commitment to a purpose, or enjoying the fruits of former accomplishments. It also seems impossible to conclude that these gifts are given to all. There are many who have them in great measure, and who revel in them and use them wisely, but there are also many cranky and unhappy old men and women who seem not to have them at all. If the gifts are truly gifts of age, then it is probably more accurate to say, rather than that the gifts are not given to all, that all are not able to receive them.

Dan wrote, “Acceptance is not a perfect word. It does not fully convey the sense of flow, fulfillment and peace of mind that I associate with it. It doesn't fully express the sense of grace. But I like it because what I hear in it is not the part of accept that means endure but the part that means receive. As in receive a gift. If I've learned anything, it is how to receive. It was a friend, a psychic, who first told me--as I was waiting for insight at the bottom of my lonely pit--that I needed to open myself and learn to receive (was it this that changed the pit to a well?).”

  "You are trying to do everything on your own," she told Dan. "You don't trust the universe and you don't see that the physical reality of your circumstances, the physical world itself, is thin as tissue paper." She related the story of a man and his wife, clients of hers. The man was washing the dishes one evening when he heard a ker-plop into the soapy water of a bowl in the sink. Reaching in, he pulled out a ring. He had never seen the ring before. He took it to his wife who exclaimed, “Where on earth did you find that? I haven't seen that ring in twenty years!” Dan’s psychic friend explained that it had just come through in order to help the woman deal with what it symbolized to her, some unfinished business from the past.

“I'm sure I privately scoffed at the story,” Dan wrote, “Yet I would say this has turned out to be what has happened to me, too. Something, a coin, a ring, has come through that tissue paper thin wall of time and space. Its gradual recognition has had a miraculous effect. I do a better job of receiving myself just as I am and receiving others just as they are. I'm more open. The wars between me and me have diminished over time, replaced by an inner connection to the flow. I know I've embraced something - or it has embraced me.”

Becoming more open to receiving what is available to us, rather than struggling along possessed by the desire to have things our own way, appears to be a pre-requisite for acquiring the gifts of age. And Deb pointed to a few other prerequisites when she wrote, “Age brings wisdom, a commonly held belief. Although wisdom is not confined to older folks, wisdom can manifest new strains, or gifts, as we age, if we remain aware, open, and reflective.”

Aldous Huxley summed it up this way, "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." It is what we do with our experience that determines whether or not we are capable of receiving the gifts of age, and approaching our experience with awareness, openness, and a habit of reflection appears to be prerequisite.

Deb experiences a bittersweet quality to realizing it has taken her fifty-seven years to arrive at her inner confidence. “But some things just can’t be rushed,” she wrote, “Like the silky taste of an aged Cabernet, or the patina on a piece of old bronze.”

She confesses, “Over the past two years I have been envious of women with silver hair. Not gray hair, or white hair, but silver hair. It happened again a few weeks ago while out hiking to a waterfall. I saw a vibrant looking woman in her forties with beautiful silver hair. Contrary to our youth-driven culture, she did not look old in her silver locks.” Deb will turn sixty in 2011. “That’s my target date to have grown out my roots and become dazzingly silver-haired, whether it be au natural, or with the help of my hairdresser.”  

This September, Dan, at fifty-nine, will marry “a fabulous woman and soul-mate.” He explained, “We met on eHarmony a few years ago. I haven't been married in a decade and that will complete a cycle of some kind. I feel I am coming home, maybe for the first time. Indeed, what a lesson, learning to receive, and a ring it is that shows up. Who on earth would have guessed?”

I am the oldest of our troika. I have eight years on Deb, seven on Dan. Unlike Deb, I’ve been bald for a long time and don’t care at all about what hair I do have. Like Deb, judgmentalism feels less satisfying to me, and I no longer care much about proving something to others. Unlike Dan, I would probably not have scoffed at the psychic’s story about the ring. Like Dan, I have had to learn how to receive and was remarried at about the same age that he is now.

I can say from my “elder” position to both of them (and perhaps to you) that if you remain aware, open, reflective, and receptive, the gifts of age will keep getting better, at least for the next seven or eight years, which is all that I can speak to.

[Photo Credits:  ring - "JK;"Iris - Dan Oestreich]
 

The Gifts of Age - Part 1

 

[This is the first of a two-part, three-way post. Many thanks to Dick Richards for initiating this project. You will find the same post at both Dick's and Dan's sites.]

 

Life has a way of stripping away the nonessentials one year at a time, until we're left with our real selves, unashamed before the world, refined by experience, shaped by the things we've learned and the passions we've pursued...

--Author Unknown

I asked Dan Oestreich and Deb Call to join with me (I’m Dick Richards) in creating a post about “the gifts of age” because it seemed that we were each plowing that field in our individual blogs. So this is a collaborative effort and it has been my privilege to put our thoughts together and to act as narrator for this two-part adventure. These two posts are being published simultaneously at our blogs.

In response to my invitation, Deb wrote of a lessening of judgmental attitudes as one gift of age. “Smack in middle-age,” she wrote, “I find that life has softened my edges. With perspective I rely less on black and white thinking. Being judgmental feels less satisfying. I haven't extinguished these traits, as my husband will attest, but engage in them less frequently.”

She also recognizes another gift of age, which she calls inner confidence. “I distinguish this inner confidence as a willingness to be my "real self," she wrote. “It differs from the external, ego driven confidence I developed from accomplishments as a way to prove something to others. Inner confidence means I no longer have to look a decade younger if I don't want to. Inner confidence means I can celebrate middle age my way, even if my friends and husband don't get it yet. It’s about my recognizing whose story I’m listening to about how to do ‘middle age’.”

As an example about listening to her own story rather than someone else’s, Deb wrote, “The other day I stopped into my eye doctor’s office to pick up an order of contact lenses. I happened to glance down and see a woman’s magazine. Sally Field sat on the cover. The headline read ‘How to Look Seven Years Younger.’ I had my Eureka moment: this is an old story foisted upon American women about how to age. Who cares? Obviously I don’t anymore. The real gift of age is the one I give myself, the inner confidence that says I don’t need anyone’s permission anymore to be the natural me!”

Dan told a story which led him to yet another gift of age. He wrote, “Fifteen years ago I embarked on a major mid-life learning and change process. I thought at the beginning I was refining the work I did for pay. It did that in a major way, and it overturned everything in my personal life as well. Figuratively, I went down into the pit, the well of grief, I believe the poet David Whyte calls it, to find the golden coins. It was a very tough period emotionally, enormous highs and lows. I lost many relationships. I was often--usually--at war with myself over something. The one coin I seemed to have brought back I would call acceptance.”

Dan’s story reminded me of a friend in his late eighties who told me that he was having trouble remembering names. I asked him how he felt about that, expecting to hear a tale of frustration and loss. He replied, “Oh, I’ve accepted it. Right now I have one problem; I can’t remember names. If I don’t accept it then I’ll have two problems.”

Non-judgmentalism, inner confidence, acceptance. And I will add one more gift of age, fruition.

Fruition means, the condition of bearing fruit. Seeds planted in my mind have sometimes taken years to bear anything but anemic fruit. For example, sixteen years ago I had a sudden flash of insight: “I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.” But an insight is not a change, and for many years thereafter I continued on the path of proving various things about myself to various people. Today, while I still work at extinguishing the urge-to-prove, I finally feel confident that I no longer desire to prove anything even when old impulses to do so arise. This fruit is now robust, but it has taken sixteen years to fully understand, integrate, and practice not-proving. Those years came only by aging.

The kind of fruit we get depends, of course, on the seeds we choose to nourish. I like the following story to illustrate the point. Two elderly Jewish men, who had met in and survived a Nazi concentration camp, came together again many years later. The first man asked the second how life had been since their liberation from the camp. The second man told of a life of contentment and accomplishment, said, "I've forgiven them for what they did," and then asked the first man about his life. The first man told of a life of resentment and woe and said, "I'll never forgive those bastards." The second man shook his head sadly, "That is all too bad," he said, "It seems they still have you in their prison."

The seeds we choose to nourish, and their effect on the gifts of age, will be the subject of Part 2 in this series.

[Photo Credit:  Dan Oestreich]

Texting in Middle Age

I finally succumb to the pressure. 

For the past few months I've received text messages from a business colleague who apparently forgets I don't have texting in my cell phone plan.  As a result, I've paid additional charges to AT&T.  My recent cell phone bills make it clear to me that it's cheaper to add texting to my plan than to pay a la carte.

So it's official.  I now text, heaven forbid.  Last weekend, while sitting in an open house for a property we have for sale, I practiced creating text messages and learning how to punctuate.  Tedious, I must admit.  While I came away with some basic skills, I also came away with a sore neck that required a trip to my chiropractor this week.

I'm not sure texting is a good thing.  Oh sure, my adult daughters are thrilled that Mom can now text.  And it was exciting when daughter #1 texted me that she had landed safely in Chicago on her return home from Europe.  And with the flurry of texting that went on with daughter #2 last weekend, my husband was sure I'd run through my plan in no time flat.

Yes, texting can come in handy when I need to get someone's attention.  Like yesterday when I texted 3 business colleagues about an offer made on a property and told them to get the details in the email I sent.

There's also a little thrill, I admit, when my phone goes off to indicate I've rec'd a text.  This will wear off quickly, I predict.  The part I find less thrilling is having to compose a reply using the keypad of a plain old cellphone.  I'm fatigued after sending off the message.  My friend has an IPhone and with the ease of that keypad sends me texts several paragraphs long!

Unlike texting, I think that email is one of the greatest advances ever created.  I pride myself on being one of the first out of my circle of friends, family and professional colleagues to use email back in the early '90's.  In spite of spam and other abuses of email, I still derive great value from it.

In my middle-aged opinion, texting has a place . . . but a much smaller place in the large scheme of things.  I grew up during a time when people hand-wrote letters to one another.  When talking long distance on the phone was a luxury (I always called collect to home while in college).  We learned to communicate the old fashioned way.  Call me old-school, I still like to hear a person's voice.

On the other hand, my daughters live in a generation addicted to texting and other forms of electronic communication.  My kids sleep with their cell phones, and my niece admits to be compulsively attached to her Blackberry.  One of these days the American Psychiatric Association will include obsessive texting in their diagnostic manual. 

Since it doesn't hurt to broaden my perspective, please leave a comment and share how texting has affected your life.  If you don't text, tell us why.

In the meantime, I'll text when absolutely necessary, but no more. 

[Photo Credit:  John Lee]

When Not to Follow the Crowd - Blog Spotlight

I notice a theme developing as I read diverse posts from Pat, Liz, Dick, and Jory.  Although each of these bloggers writes on totally separate topics, they carry a personal message for me about the cost of following the herd.

Without further adieu, the spotlight shines on these well-written posts.

Pat Ruppel's post on Fitting In - Cookie Cutter or Piece of Puzzle, provides encouragement for not fitting in when it really doesn't fit us.  The world needs the expression of uniqueness of each person.  I especially like the questions she poses at the end to help us understand our motivation for choosing to fit in or not.

Liz Strauss' The Danger of Old Think and the Dangers of Thinking New highlights two follies.  One is to attempt to interject old skills and perspectives into a new culture; the other is to throw out the old and follow the new because everyone else is doing it.  She ends the post with a killer sentence that nails the solution - it's like  Haiku for business.  I won't quote the sentence here because I don't want to give away the ending!

Sometimes I follow the crowd to fit in, or to prove something, either to "somebody out there" or to myself.  Dick Richards pens a candid post, Nothing to Prove, tracing what he tried to prove in the past with what he's since learned. 

Jory Des Jardins critiques Twitter in  If I Were Twitter's Agent.  Her analysis is both knowedgable and entertaining. 

You may wonder how Jory's post relates to following the crowd.  It hits a personal note for me because I feel conflicted about joining Twitter.  My conflict does not really center on Twitter.  It rests on my ambivalence about wanting to be a part of the "in crowd," and my desire to preserve my energy.

Nor does it rest on any concern about new technology.  I'm perfectly capable of 'twittering."  But I look back and see that I only joined Facebook and LinkedIn because so many people ceaselessly invited me to join.  I haven't completed my full profiles on either site, and don't utilize it as I should. 

I realize in writing this that there's a time to follow the herd, and a time to follow my energy.  If I do the latter, I'll lead a life that feels more authentic and rewarding.

When do you think it makes sense to follow the crowd?

Photo Credit:  Andre Mesker

 

What Does Higher Guidance Have to do with Buying a Car?

My blog tagline, "Connecting Inner Knowing with Outer Living" reminds me that higher guidance can assist us with practical matters too.

About 6 weeks ago ago our trusted auto mechanic told me that my 1996 Camry could not go more than 2 more months without some essential repairs (timing belt, water pump replacement, major oil leaks etc.) - at least $1000 to keep it going.  God bless "Betsy" - she has 195,000 miles on her and has been the best car I've ever owned.  She still looks good too.  But I know her days on the road are winding down.

My logical side says it's not a good idea to take precious cash out of savings for a down payment on a new car.  Fear tells me that my husband can be laid off late this year when the engineering project he's on is completed.  This is based on fact - engineers are getting laid off all over the Greenville SC metro area.  Safer to put more money into the old car to keep it going.

Yet my inner knowing begs to differ.  The past few weeks I find myself detaching emotionally from this car.  I no longer feel as confident in her reliability.  In spite of logic and fear, I just "know" that we are supposed to buy a new car.  My hubbie agrees.  Meanwhile, I've run through my mind how we can handle a job layoff financially so that we will not be giving a new car back to the bank. 

Last weekend we begin the car shopping in earnest, and after 4 days of intense research and negotiating, we become owners of a new Honda Accord.  During that process, I rely on the excellent information at Edmunds, conversations with other Honda Accord owners, and intuition to make our purchase.  Edmunds gives car buyers the tools and savvy to make a successful purchase. 

In today's economy, we have never experienced such motivated car sellers, or rock bottom interest rates on car loans.  Imagine playing 3 different Honda dealers off one another to arrive at the price I want on a "loaded" Accord?  We wanted to give the first salesman who worked with us the business.  I asked him to match the lowest price I found and he agreed.  Two hours later he hands me the keys to my new car!

Inner knowing immediately names my new car "Grace."  With new affection for the car I intend to drive for the next 10-12 years, I dub her "Gracie."  I express my verbal thanks to Betsy, and as soon as I return from an out of town trip I will donate her to a non-profit.  With care, she still has some life left in her. 

Now my inner knowing is communicating promptings about my hair color . . . but I won't go there today!

Goosebumps with Susan Boyle

In the rare chance you haven't heard the buzz about Susan Boyle, listen to her sing "I Dreamed a Dream" from the musical Les Miserables, when she auditioned for the show Britains Got Talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

She knocked the cynical socks off the judges and stupefied them.  She had the audience cheering in the first stanzas.  Bet you can't listen to it just once!

What a lesson -  the most magnificent surprises often come in unassuming packages!  Susan, you rock!

Flash Bites

For the past week I've been receiving intuitive flashes.  They come through as an insight, an inner knowing, a glimmer, a picture, or a physical sensation on personal and business issues in my life.

Like sound bites, they're brief and get my attention.  It occurs to me this morning, as I lay in bed, that these are "flash bites."  They grab me and shift me from smallness to expansion, all in the space of seconds!

For example, yesterday afternoon we are watching the movie, Henry Poole is Here.  The central character struggles with a loss of faith.  He depends solely on what he knows logically.  He is challenged by neighbors whose faith and beliefs summon  "miracles." 

Near the end of the movie my flash bite comes.  In my need to make the lives of my husband and two daughters "better," I am shown a different way of being.  I am released from needing to control outcomes.  I can let go.  With my husband, my job is not to help him become more "spiritual" but to grow in my own faith.  My job is not to fuss over my 26 yr old daughter in her present state of unsettledness, but to love her.  She is much wiser than I was at that age, and will choose well.  My job is not to obsess over my 23 yr. old daughter finding a job in Chicago when she moves there this summer (by the way . . . anyone need a talented graphic designer?).  She's perfectly capable finding work, if past performance is any indicator.

As I read over the flash bite above, it sounds rational.  But it did not come through that way.  I felt lightened and free when I received this intuitive flash.  I felt like a different part of me (yes, I'll call her the Divine One) was reassuring me that my job was done.  I can relax.  I can love.  Translated . . . I can give up worry.

You cannot worry about someone and love them at the same time. Most people mistake the emotion of worry for the emotion of love. They think that worrying about somebody means that you love them.
- Abraham

In hindsight, I look back and see the pivotal flash bite that arrived last weekend, setting off this series of flash bites the past few days.  It all starts with a visit to downtown Asheville, a 75 minute drive from our South Carolina home.  We have made it a tradition on all of our trips to Asheville to make our last stop at Malaprops Bookstore.  Street musicians play outside the doors.  Stepping into the doors of this independent bookseller, I feel immediate pleasure.  For book lovers like me it's an orgy of delight.  Because it's not a chain store, even the coffee aromas smell more intoxicating.  Walking on old floor boards that creak, I scan the colorful book displays and creative organization that draw me further in.  I wander over to a shelf entitled "Banned Books" - all  those books we are so familiar with that have been banned at one time or another, including Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.  I feel myself losing sense of time.  I acquaint myself with new authors, and check in with familiar ones.  

Over and over again, I find myself drawn to another area with a book entitled Life is a Verb by Patti Digh.  The subtitle - "37 Days to Wake Up , Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally."  Why does the author's name sound so familiar?  I soon realize that she is a blogger that I have read sometime in the past.  Holding her book is a tactile pleasure in itself.  The book feels so smooth and silky!  Colors pop throughout the multitude of unique illustrations.  As her blog proclaims, her book is not a self-help book, but a soul-help book.  Without hesitation I buy the book.

After our friends head back to Ohio, I nestle my derriere on the couch to soak myself in this book for awhile.  My flash bite shows up during a writing exercise.  I become aware that I've put myself in a pissy funk by comparing myself to others who are better writers, better bloggers, know more than me, ad nauseum.  I'm filled with a sense of mean smallness towards myself.

Simultaneously something else comes through - call it soul help.  I feel a physical sense of warmth come from my heart.  I feel my heart expand and open as I sense a loving, compassionate presence.  I flip from holding myself with disdain to a sense of deep love and gratitude for being me.  I do feel a regret for the wasted time, but make a contract with myself to do something loving or compassionate for myself each day. 

The following morning, I decide to stop multi-tasking at breakfast.  I don't check email while eating and watching Good Morning America before rushing off to Jazzercise.  I give myself the gift of being present.  The rest of the day unfolds without the typical sense of urgency and pressure that I inflict upon myself.

And so it goes . . . as I learn to be more present, flash bites find a receptive state as I move through my week.  What I wish I had done, and will do from now on, is jot down my flash bites as they come through.  I hope to capture as much of the essence of the message, and the feeling as possible.  Later, when I fall back, I can turn to my written flash bite and "remember" again.

Forgive this rambling story.  I tell it to myself to understand how the Universe supports me, tracing my steps back to Malaprops, and taking note of the numerous flash bites that have come through since then just this week.  Take heart, Deb, you are never alone.  And neither are you!

Photo Credits:  Light in sky - Dimitar Tzankov; Malaprops Bookstore - Malaprops website