true life planet

A lemon revolution……… 

Oh boy. Where to begin.

Well, I’ll tell you all something. Of late, my life has had alot of lemons.

There were so many that I was trying to put on a happy face, be industrious, and make as much lemonade as possible.

Suddenly I found myself in a scene similiar to that famous ” I Love Lucy” show where Ethel and Lucy are in a candy factory on the assembly line…the candy keeps coming, faster and faster. They can’t pack the boxes anymore, it’s coming so fast, so they are stuffing it wherever they can. It ends in disaster, of course.

Life is kind of like that too. Sometimes so much is coming at you that you can’t do much and you end up buried under what ever is coming your direction.

Of course, Lucy and Ethel got buried under a pile of chocolates. I got buried under alot of other things.

I have been doing well, trying to deal with each day one day at a time. That’s the best way to manage everything right now. And life’s been good. …I’ve got great friends, a wonderful place to live, and wonderful projects to work on, as well as a strong spiritual life.

Then suddenly, I lost it all. A downpour of lemons, in form of love gone wrong.

Such grief, such sadness. There are no words to describe that feeling.

Even though I have moved on in alot of places in my life, it’s still fresh, and I kept getting pulled back into that pit. Not often, mind you, but often enough.   I knew it was in the way –almost a physical roadblock–to the rest of my life and goals coming into fruition.

I was sitting there, overwhelmed by gloom and sadness, when I thought to myself, “Why do this yourself?”

I had no answer. No really good one anyway.

And it occurred to me that compassion begins with yourself.And I fully realized, probably for the very first time in my entire life, that I need to come first.And I need to be compassionate to myself before I give that compassion away to anyone else.

And I realized just what I’d been giving away, to the wrong person, and I thought of all the people in world that could have benefited from that love and care and compassion and they didn’t.

And here’s an obvious epiphany: one actually gets to choose how to deal with all those lemons coming one’s direction.

This is obvious to the rest of you but..it wasn’t to me. I actually was letting other people decide that for me, under the general umbrella that I was less important. I did not think I deserved to express how angry I was. I was so busy being caught up in trying to be compassionate for others that I was not compassionate towards myself.

I know. It’s incredible to me that I thought that. I really believed that, that I did that.

And the thought of what I had been doing and not doing so moved me that I leapt up out of my chair, ended my gloom, and got, for the first time, angry.

I mean the kind of anger that comes on like a tsunami. The kind of anger that causes revolutions.

And I thought, “Well, it’s time to become a revolutionary.”

Because if the things that I say are important to me are really that important, then I’m not going to give them up for anyone else. I’m going to need every ounce of compassion and energy that I have for those goals and ideas and people. I’ve got many people through out the world counting on me to make a real difference int heir lives and in my own, and I’m not about to let them or myself down.

So I went off and had a bit of a revolution…said what I needed to say…

And it felt really good actually. It felt FABULOUS. I was surprised how right it felt. I was motivated by the fact that I had neglected my own self care, and my care for others, because I was putting all this energy into wrong things and people. When you do that, it keeps you in the past, which is perhaps where some might like you to be. But I prefer the future, which is vast, unknown, exciting.

That anger, it was overwhelming. It was powerful. It was cathartic.

And when I finished expressing that anger, I resolved to be free of that old hurt and love, to completely free of it…to allow it to disappear. And I’m sure this will take time, but I’ll be ready.

Somewhere along the line..I’m not sure where..when this relationship ended, I “bought into” the idea that it was my responsibility to be there for him,  to help him.  It sounds crazy, I know! I bought it hook, line, and sinker..and I sank pretty low. Not every day, but every time I had to interact, it was exhausting, draining, terrible. It was over, yet I felt pressure to be friends, or pressure to be in contact. Well, I realized, that’s all it was.. –pressure– that was not coming from me..and it didn’t have to be honored or accepted.

And when I saw, really saw, what was true–that it wasn’t my responsibility…it was like the light in the room turned on and I could see everything much more clearly.

And now, it’s finished. The book is closed, put away in some dusty corner of my mind, and I don’t think I will take it out again for a long time. I can finally breathe. I can enjoy life again.

It takes courage to begin something: but sometimes, we must summon the courage to finish something before we can really begin to live the life we are capable of living. 

 The only person who can help someone is themselves. Me included.

And life..just suddenly got bigger, and brighter, and alot more JOYFUL. It has become..dare I say…Pleasant and calm.

I relaxed. I made of a list of the next places to travel (Morocco! Columbia! Peru!) and took out a pile of guidebooks and read them.

 I planned the trip to India in December.

I called my friends in a little village in India, and talked to most of the village!

I bought myself two bouquets of flowers.

I made cupcakes, and ate them all.

I agreed to speak at a series of talks on World Peace and Social Justice.

I joined a gym (this new perspective requires much cupcake making and therefore cupcake eating and therefore gym!)

I decided to buy a bicycle.

I decided to docent at an art museum and signed up.

I unpacked my cookbooks and planned out some beautiful meals.

I looked at photos from my trip and worked on putting together a slide show and presentation for my friends.

And since there are loads of lemon trees near my little house…I made several gallons of lemonade.

Life goes on. And life is good.

gigi

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.