Do I Believe

I was listening to Terry Gross interview a woman who had just written a book about her experience with cancer a few days ago.  The woman told Terry that she had listened to so many stories and read so many books about people who had had cancer who considered it to be a gift.  She went on to say that in her opinion, cancer was a big bad pain in the ass and that it was horrendously horrible.  After saying this the woman laughed, Terry laughed, and I laughed.

Now this woman was no downer.  She was upbeat.  She was positive.  She was funny.  She just did not consider that everything that comes into our lives is a gift.  Or that what we focus on or do not focus on is necessarily what comes into our lives.  That got me thinking about where I am with all of this positive thinking phenomena everyone is so immersed in.  And I had to admit that frankly, it pisses me off a little. 

I have two dear friends who have a website and publish a newsletter that is about living a full life.  Living an honest and artistic life.  Living a real life.  Living a joyful life.  I love them.  I love what they put out into the world.  And yet when I read the last couple of newsletters I found myself getting hot under the collar.  Why?  Well, I’ll go into that later.  First let me tell you where the anger took me.  And please know that this is MY interpretation of the messages and MY initial reaction to them.

First, into just being angry.   I not only refuted the words but felt insulted by the upbeat messages.  Messages about how if we focus our attention we will be able to draw to us what we want or, if we don’t get what we want, then we must getting what we need. The message that where we put out attention is what we draw to us.  My gut reaction to the words was to retort with, “Did I draw in my son being kidnapped.  Did my sister need her ovarian cancer.  Does the woman being raped this very moment need to look at it as a gift.  Is the child dying in a refugee camp going to be able to get what he wants.”  And I was irritated by the optimistic outlook about how we can learn to live a life of outrageous joy.  The word outrageous made me tired.   It made me feel like something I could never live up to.  Why can’t we just live a life where we learn to court joy, to let it in, to embrace us, I asked.  Why does joy have to be so damn BIG. 

What I knew shortly into the anger is that this was about me.  I’ve learned, and continue to learn in every humbling moment, that it is best to let my reactions be my reactions.  To listen to them but to remind myself not to tell a story about them.  Not to make them the TRUTH.  I know these friends who write such optimistic and positive words.  I trust them.  And as I fumed I held that truth close to me.  And I just sat with it all.  One of these very friends has been so instrumental in my learning that – how to sit with life.  Yes, I’ll say it – a gift.  And so I then began the slow exploration of what set me off.  Why was I so angry.  What was going on with me.

A quote arrived in my email today. “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

-        Niels Bohr

How perfect.  How timely.  How serendipitous.  It tied in right with what I had come to believe.  That this is not about someone being right or someone being wrong.  It is about perception.  It is about interpretations.  It is about semantics.  For I believe with all of my heart that my two friends and I are on the same page.   We just may interpret the words a bit differently.  And so I began to examine myself and my reactions.  Like I said, this is really about me.  My friends are innocent participants in my reactions.   I am profoundly grateful to have them in my life. 

As I write I try to remind myself to be open to myself.  To not define myself by fixed ideas.  To allow the notion of neither this nor that being truth.  And so, I began breaking it down for myself.  Right now at this moment in time in this place on this planet this is where I am.   As I write I believe more firmly that a lot of my viewpoint is about semantics.  What words mean to me.  What they invoke in me.

Do I believe that we get exactly what we ask for.  No.  To me that feels like setting myself up for disappointment and failure.  I believe that in order to survive I’ve become a minimalist.  To define what I want by using precise descriptors seems limiting to me.  It feels like boxing myself into a viewpoint.  And I ask myself when does wanting become grasping.  To say I want to be happy.  Well I do.  But what about all of the other emotions that enter my life.  Do I see them as less.  Do I reject them.  Do I see them as being less then what happy is.  What if I’m not happy?  What works for me right now is to say I want to be open to what comes in.  Let happiness shine in me.  Let sorrow.  Let rain fall.  Let the seasons make a home in me.  What if I say I want to have more money.  Let me tell you that my reaction is a sudden, Oh, I do.  My mind often conjures up all of the lovely things I would do with more money.   But should I believe that focusing on getting more money or having more money will make me happy.  No.  However, a little, nagging voice is telling me that it personally would like to have a little more cash at hand and that perhaps we could hedge our bets on this one.

 Do I believe that by defining what we want means we will get what we want.  No.  But it seems that by doing this we will be more clear in knowing if we should head North, South, East or West. I do believe focus can bring clarity.   It just feels important to me that I don’t fixate on the destination and am willing to be blown about by the currents of change.  Do I believe that what we focus on is what we attract.  No.  And yet I believe that if we really try to meet life, as it is said, right where we are, that we see, feel, hear, taste things in the world that have always been around us.   We just weren’t tuned in.  And then there is that nagging word, serendipity, buzzing around in my mind.  The way things miraculously line up sometimes with no explanation.  Fact or fiction.  Helping us find what we need?  Helping us to find a way in?

Want.  Need.  In her newsletter my friend referred to the Rolling Stones lyrics that tell us “We can’t always get what we want, but if we try sometimes, we just might get what we need.”   I too have always been moved by these lyrics.  A voice inside of me would like me to believe that life can be defined by these words. Would like to believe that they can offer me some kind definition, something definite, to live by.  But it doesn’t feel that way to me.   I stand trembling before the belief that every footstep is a wild gamble into the unknown.  And that for me, for me, this is the way to walk.  And yet, again, there is a blaze of serendipitous events I have known in my life that I cannot ignore but only marvel at as they spark through my life like constellations.  I want to insert a smile and a very large ? mark here.

I don’t believe the prophecy that everything that happens to us is in the best interest of our enlightenment.  But at the end of this introspection, I read those words again and can embrace them.  Semantics again, I believe.  My first interpretation was that “best interest” somehow inferred karma – that things happen and are set up to happen for a purpose.  I don’t know if that was the intent of the words or not.  But I can now find the beauty in them if I use my own interpretation.  If I simply say, everything that happens to us can lead to enlightenment, I almost weep with joy. 

At the end of these ponderings, I read over my friend’s words again, and I realize that all I have to do is substitute one word, one simple, tiny, miraculous word, ‘experience’ in place of ‘attract’, into the text and everything opens up for me.  My mind, my body, my heart.  I simply have to remember who she is and I can then allow myself to find a context within myself.  To understand that “the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

These are my friend’s beautiful words with my alternate word inserted.

“Where is your attention right now? Where will it be in the next hour? Later tonight? As we step further into this new year, I want to encourage you to pay close attention to your attention! Are you listening to the news and attracting (experiencing) a sense of despair? Are you playing with your children and attracting (experiencing) laughter and close relationships? Are you focusing on healthy foods and attracting (experiencing)  vitality?

“What we focus on is what we attract (experience).”

I close with deep gratitude.  And, oh yeah, right now right here in this moment, with outrageous joy.

Suki