A Man in a Hat and a Wildish Way Child


  
He was recently single with a wouldn't die dream of the man he wanted to be when he was seventeen.  With money to burn and time on his hands he went out and bought all the trappings of the life he thought he wanted and never got to have.  It went down hill after that.  I guess he didn't know that a hat does not make you a cowboy.  His carefully cultivated life that shouted “Here’s who I am”  ended up being a mile wide and half an inch deep, nothing he could sustain or wanted to when it was all said and done.  The sad part is that he is so busy telling the world who he wants to be that we never get to see who he really is. And neither does he.

Then there’s Rachel. Rachel is a seven year old wildish way child who knows who she is because her mother lets her Be.  Not too long ago she dressed herself in purple shorts, an eighties headband, added a school award  and two paper leis for good measure then struck a pose that declared to the world just how fabulous she knew herself to be. Rachel doesn't try to hide or pretend to be something that she’s not. She knows what I have recently learned again. We are not who the world tells us to be. Nor are we who we declare ourselves to be in the world. Who we are is Love. Love is always right there, waiting to be let loose in the world.  It doesn't matter if you have been happily married for fifty years or single for twenty.  You can be in house full of people or living on an island alone. Love is there because you carry it with you. It's part of our DNA. You are always in love. Now, how cool is that.

When we stop shouting who we are to the world and allow silence to fill our lives something slightly magical happens. We enter the space inside ourselves and in that space we see ourselves as we really are, Love. It may only be a glimpse, but hey, sometimes that’s all it takes to remind you that you are not your wounds, you are not your past, you are not your fears.  You can lay those burdens down and experience the Divine and radiant beauty inherent in each of us. When I see myself as I truly am, a deeply loved child of God, I can’t help but see you that way, and her, and him, and them over there. Then poof, just like that, if only for a flicker in time, differences disappear and we are one, a family of man.

That truth, we are all One Divinely created soul of humanity, never changes.  The only thing that changes is our awareness of it. You either see yourself  with love or you see yourself with fear. And what you see is what you get. When you are like Rachel and you see yourself with love you can’t help but see others with love. The minute that happens it no longer matters what you  or someone else does or doesn't do for a living, where you live or don’t live, and it for damn sure doesn't matter what you look like.  As my friend Bob says, “We’re all born naked, after that it’s drag.” The only thing that matters is that you become who you were born to be, a divine and deeply loved being of peace. It's either fear or love, baby.  What's it gonna be?

   






Comments

Anonymous said…
Terrific writing!
July 22, 2014 at 7:57 AM
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