the story behind the heART: Think that you might be wrong.

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It began on a playground in a new-to-me neighborhood as we searched for a sports team for my son to join. I'd heard through the grapevine this and that so we arrived to the park and rec center to talk with the coach about my son joining, after the season started and with no experience. It was a time in life I felt generally overwhelmed, behind, like I could not catch up, making it very hard to live in the present moment rather than be chased by my fears. As we waited for the coach's break, my boys and I started playing on the jungle gym. I showed off my grade school monkey bar skills and grabbing a small moment of delight, I hung upside down from the bar, swinging from my bent knees, my hair brushing the sand as I pendulum swung back and forth. I could feel my grin upside down, noticed the strangeness of the corners  of my mouth pulled toward the earth rather than away.  The sounds of parents and children playing around me were familiar but being upside I could not recognize anything - there were just shapes of color, shadows and sounds that did not attach to any of these moving shapes. It was the same overwhelming to me world, but upside I was detached from my own sense of reality enough to truly see: patches of sunlight, shadows in the shape of a child chasing an adult, the sound of a toddler trying to reach, the feel of my sons nearby, etc. I thought to myself, "Hey, this world looks just right, not so overwhelming. There are simply pieces of experiences around me I can put together to form any truth I choose."  The blood rush to the head or a brief encounter with enlightenment?I was reminded of this upside-down experience a few years later as I walked through post-Katrina New Orleans visiting the devastated neighborhood of my graduate school internship and spied a hand lettered sign at the very top of a telephone pole "Think that you might be wrong." This new truth resonated deep inside and my mind played with this saying for months until it emerged as this "No Parking" style sign as truism. How freeing this turns out to be! Being right all the time is exhausting.Think that you might be wrong. This turns out to be one of the ways I believe I love you best - taking my strongest beliefs and turning them upside down to see what shakes out. Shaking with anger, jealousy, tears, fear - any of my dark side feelings - is a sure reminder to see if I can flip that story in my head upside down and think, even for a moment, that I might be wrong.  Often, at least one opportunity will fall out of this experiment. And generally, I can then see my feelings as the shapes and colors they are rather than the marching orders they give.There are times in life, or people or situations in life that provide opportunity (sometimes seemingly endless) to "bow to the Buddha" that is withing that experience. Meaning, a person can be so frustrating, the situation so impossible, the time in life so overwhelming that we instinctively rage AGAINST it rather than simply bow to the opportunity within. Raging against it will attract more of the same, offer power to that very thing we want to become smaller or less overwhelming. Bowing to the Buddha inside that person or moment allows us to soften internally, not hold so tightly to the stories we've assigned to certain shapes or shadows, and perhaps put that story together in a new way that better suits our own growth, progress, walk toward love and light.Because I love you so, some of the time I'm going to think that I might be wrong.