I had a big epiphany this weekend. Deo gratias. It was amazingly cool, in hindsight, but at the time, I was really suffering. Last week I was overwhelmed with the winter blahs. I do suffer from Seasonal Irritation which is a close cousin to Seasonal Depression, but a lot more cranky.
February is my least favorite month. It’s way too Winterish and has no interesting holidays in it. (Valentines Day. Bah.) And then there is always school vacation which inevitably leads to being snow bound for days while the stomach flu goes through your entire house, including the gold fish and the houseplants. (Trust me, the houseplants with the tummy bug? Not pretty…)
So I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself, which I think is a regional past time in New England in February. I wrote a list of things I did not like about my life. It was pretty much everything. Weather. Kids, house, relationship, job, money, health, football and shoes. It was all in there, all the really important stuff. I was feeling stucker then stuck. There was no more football and nary a cool pair of shoes in a 50 mile radius.
I looked at my pathetic list, while a little tear of self pity smudged my make up. And then I wrote another list of things I felt like I could change, which came down to my attitude and that was that. Ack, I have a boring, stuck, cranky, snowy life and I can’t change it! Barefoot. In the snow. With no football till August.
My response was to dial up my attitude to “Suck it Up” and crank the sphincter-O-Meter up to a ten.
Egads.
Then I had one of those amazing universal dope smack moments that truly make life worth living. It happened as it often does for me, when I was saying something to someone else. In fact, I was teaching our third year students in the Institute of Energy Medicine. They are about to graduate from the school in June and a groovier bunch of folks you will never meet. (Unless you met our other grads. And our teachers. And all the other classes too. And all my very cool friends. Plus, my dog.)
I was teaching a section on Spiritual Mastery and we were having a conversation on what constitutes spiritual mastery.
“Choice. It’s about choice,” I heard myself saying. “Spiritual masters don’t whine and complain. They choose. If they are in a situation that they don’t like, they change it. No complaining or feeling sorry for themselves. Or they choose to stay. And either way, they are empowered.”
Suddenly, time stopped and Angels filled the room. “Dude,” they said to me. “Are you listening? This is for YOU! Quit whining and please get it that your life is what you chose. Everything! You PICKED all this stuff out yourself. And if you really look at your life, you would see that you would choose everything you have all over again, exactly as it is.”
Wow.
I had a brief verbal tussle with them about the Patriots and the Superbowl. I did NOT choose that! I would have chosen the Pat’s squashing the life out of the loud mouth Jets and then rampaging over the Pack in a stunning victory.
“Um…” one of the angels said, “Does she need an intervention?”
Another whispered confidently, “No, no, it’s just her passionate nature. It needs to focus on something.”
“Yeah,” replied a cherubim. “That’s it. Football is a human metaphor for the inner battle of light and dark that exists inside all of us.” There was a lot of angelic head nodding and tossing of curls.
“That Tom Brady sure is a cutie pie,” another one sang. They all twittered and fluffed their feathers. That must be it!
But back to my realization. I am sure I sat there in my class totally gobsmacked for a good minute while all of this transpired, angels, Tom Brady and all. Good thing my classes are used those moments of me being quietly glassy eyed and out to lunch. They just waited politely, while the universe re-arranged itself around my realization.
I DID see it all. I WOULD choose everything the way it is. I am not a victim here. I do not need to be victimized by the weather and football. I choose to live here, because the people I love live here. When I don’t choose to live here any more, I will move. There they were, all my choices laid out like a map, to create the landscape of my life.
I’ve been on an empowerment high ever since. So take that February! Do your worst. I am ready. I am juiced up. I am feeling my mojo like never before. And I have a PLAN that will help me bring my work out into the world in a very Bold Move. (Thanks Wendy!)
Stay tuned…
