Day Five - Getting Educated

1.19.16

I have been spending a wonderfully abundant amount of time with my three-year-old niece.  Along with letting her use my face as a model for the tester products in Ulta and giving me quality advice on which bracelets I should buy her, I have acquired valuable information on the things that matter most in life.  Below are notes I found interesting and predictably useful in the future:

Stickers are of the utmost importance, and you can add to your collection (or decorate your outfit) with the assistance of your neighborhood-friendly Trader Joe’s checkout clerk. 

Grocery stores are the most delightful playgrounds.  What is required is an excitable brother and a cart.  Adults are optional.

It's important to put on as much glitter as possible.  There is really no more explanation or specification required here.

Coloring outside the lines is completely acceptable.  Lines, in fact, are not needed at all and a pumpkin can look like just about anything.  It’s all about perspective, anyhow.  

If it doesn't taste good, don't eat it.  For example, asparagus. 

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a legit dinner.  This is valid just about any night.

Princess shirts really are wonderful.  As night-shirts, day-shirts, and play-shirts.  They can also be worn multiple days in a row. 

You can wear a tutu anywhere.  In the car, at the store, to your aunt’s house, and even to bed. 

Batting your eyelashes and sweetly saying please will get you anything you ask for.  Anything.  If for some reason the original person you ask says no, you have a very high chance of the next person saying yes.

Waking up is very easy and quite exciting.  Apparently all you need to do is open your eyes, naturally what happens next is sitting up and announcing that it is morning.

You can make a song out of anything.  Coloring, eating, playing with your dog, how much you love your mommy -- or your aunt!

It’s possible to distinguish headbands and other accoutrement with the title, “The Beautiful One.”  This makes it simple to have your mom select the correct hair accessory when you say, “No, not that one, The Beautiful One!”

Musical instruments are simple to come by.  For example, if you have two cylindrical paper items, you can start a band with your aunt.  

If you feed the dog treats, she will let you do just about anything, and have it be totally acceptable to wait for her outside of her cage until she is ready to play again.

This is intended as a start-up list.  Stay tuned for updates as the week progresses.   

Day Three - Grace and Honor

1.17.16

I took myself on an educational outing today to the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA.  For those of you that are not familiar with Bedford, likely the majority of readers here, it is a small town of about sixty-five hundred people, which, if you are interested, is approximately 4,000 less than the number of people living in my neighborhood of Philadelphia.   

It’s also home to views like this one:

 We don’t have one of these in my neighborhood.

Admittedly, my trip to the memorial was Plan B to a thwarted visit to Homestead Creamery, which, I sadly discovered, is closed on Sundays.  In my years of relaxing at Smith Mountain Lake I had never made it to this World War II Memorial.  Everything I had heard about this dedication to the 4,000 plus men, who lost their lives in June of 1944 in a monumental battle for freedom, had been filled with praise and acknowledgment.  So in a quick change of plans, I hopped into my car and drove the 30 minutes across town, turned left at a very modest sign, paid for my one adult ticket, and entered the quarter-mile of memorial in honor of these men who fought with valor, fidelity, and sacrifice. 

You may find yourself wondering why a memorial such as this exists in a town with fewer people than one square mile of Philadelphia.  A good question until you discover that Bedford suffered the highest percentage of losses than any other community in the United States in the early morning hours of June 6^th that year. 

This piece of information was not new to me, but as I walked down the cold pathways of stone, marble, and bronze, I was struck by the honor and humility of these men and their relentless fight for freedom.  And suddenly my own freedom was that much more precious.

Knowing me, you will also know that I am someone who is adamant about what is not working about this country I live in.  Among a people who obstinately profess living in the greatest country in the world, I pointedly differ in opinion, noting our comparisons in education, incarceration, technology, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  And so I was startled and moved at the honor, humility and gratitude I was suddenly awash with.  These men, these 10,000 soldiers, had voluntarily put up for sacrifice their most precious and beloved lives for the honor of my freedom—the freedom of a woman born decades after their fight.  I was, in that moment, and still am, present to the unconstrained ability to pursue happiness, peace, and joy, and the gratitude of having that freedom fought for so bravely and seemingly without question.  I am filled with a whole new level of love and appreciation for the men and women who fight for those freedoms that I have taken for granted.  I am flooded with a new kind of acknowledgement and recognition of the fight and stand these most beautiful service men and women take.  And while I know I will never fully understand what the fight is like for them, I am forever honored by it. 

The last figure as I drove away from the memorial was a sculpture created by French artist Edmond de Laheudrie.  It has been erected here to remind us of the fragile nature of peace – that it takes tending to and is not something expected, but held with honor and vigilance.  And that we are the keepers of it and it is our duty as the men and women left behind to honor the lives of these 4,400 men who died that we may know peace and freedom and the pursuit of happiness. 

Day Two - Creation

1.16.16


So I’ve taken myself on this traveling expedition down to warmer parts of the world (like that Florida-Georgia Line) and given myself an assignment that is, at the present moment, only as irritating as that one piece of sand stuck between your toes after you have put your socks and sneakers back on your feet.  I love this project in concept.  It’s romantic and expressive and reminds me of my college writing professor traveling around the Midwest and entertaining me with her artful, sassy verbiage on bries, cheddars, and bleus. 

In the reality of Saturday night it’s this thing that I’ve now promised myself and others that I will do and now don’t want to for lack of musings and inspiration, and possibly (likely) fear of jumping back into an art that has been dormant to my hands and mind for years now.  It has been quite simple this evening to find anything else to do.  I’ve watched two episodes of True Blood, showered, turned on the radio, made s’mores over the heat of the stove, poked around on the Facebook and Instagram, and cleaned the counters.  Anything to resist writing something that may or may not be poignant, inspiring, or dull. 

As I sit here wondering about what will emerge from my typing fingers, I think that this feels quite similar to the notion of creating what is next in my life.  Here I am in this beautiful, open space, this pulsing abyss, ready and wanting, calling to be leapt into and discovered and molded and created and I am resisting and avoiding every opportunity to really dive into and concoct something new—The Next Thing.

I was on a call today playing with and discussing the idea of creation and completion—how they dance with each other, a waltz in the world that shines with the drive of fulfillment and glimmers with the energies of success and failure.  I drifted off into my own considerations about what I am creating next.  I admit freely that I am open to many options and that I am reveling in the notion that I could go anywhere, having no attachments or limitations.  And yet there is this slow, drawing concern about that jump: to be careful and choose what is the exact right choice – to not error in my ways and not be precarious in my leaping into the unknown.  It makes me question if this adventure I have set myself on is simply a diversion tactic of my own doing, designed to keep me at bay for as long as possible, to keep me writing the preface to the next journey, away from the edge and safe at the shore. 

And I wonder what must it have been like, in the beginning, when there were only the word and darkness – what must it have been like to create the universe we are swimming in.  Though I admit there were vantage points from that view point, namely knowing how it will all turn out and what was the perfect location for that one tree and the perfect depth of this sea and the perfect distance from the sun and the perfect construction of gravity that would throw and pull the moon just so.  But still, I wonder what those moments held, just before that creation began, those moments in the abyss, that moment just before light cast its radiant beams into the darkness and it began.  I wonder if there was any consideration of the perfection that was about to unfold. 

And in that precise moment of wondering, I am struck by that peace of grace – that however it is, and however it will be, will be perfect.  And though I do not have that same vantage point of knowing how it will all turn out (how dull that would be!), I do know that all my actions and musings and leaps are all a part of this perfect creation we are all dancing in and however it will be will be perfect, and I can trust that and go on with my creating, dancing, discovering, wondering, fulfilling, and completing and creating again. 

Day One - Completion

1.15.16

On April 20^th, 2011 I walked into the Philadelphia office of Landmark Worldwide with a bagel, a thrill, and an adventurous spirit, ready to take on the world, all that was possible, and play an integral part in the fulfillment of what is really possible for us as human beings. 

I remember being an electrified bundle of nerves and excitement and not having any idea what actually lay ahead of me or how I was going to accomplish any of it.  I remember the beginning, of manuals and manuals and more manuals, and feeling like I was the most stupid person on the planet because somehow I forgot how to do addition or anything I had previously been trained in.  I remember crying in Katie’s office because I had no idea what the DFC was and I was responsible for doing it everyday.  I remember feeling like a deer in headlights when I got on the phone with a customer the first time.  And I remember the elation in getting off the phone and having made a difference in the life of a human being that I would likely never see or speak with again. 

The last 1700 days of my life have been the most extraordinary, transformative, moving era of all of the time I have spent in this here world.  I have discovered the gift of making a difference, the thrill of standing—deeply, powerfully, full of love and compassion—for the brilliance of the life of others.  I have been present to the grace and wonder of freedom, power, and the joyous dance of being alive and being a person who contributes that kind of greatness to another human being.  I have discovered that there is no limit to who I am and what is possible for my life and for the lives of others.  I have discovered the joy and thrill of causing others to get the difference their leadership makes and reveling in their own delight and wonder at their ability to make things happen that weren’t going to happen anyhow.  I have been touched, moved, and inspired to work with a group of exceptional human beings who go to work not to get through something, but to make something miraculous happen. 

For those that have not known and experienced it, when I tell you that being a Staff Member for Landmark is one of the deepest, most poignant, most thrilling and extraordinary experiences any human being could have, you may question my bold declaration.  I don’t know how to answer that matter of uncertainty, only to say that these last near five years have brought me through a multitude of transformations, only to come out discovering myself newly each and every time, and discovering along with that the beauty and grace of the power and magnificence of humanity and the gift we are to each other. 

Thursday, December 31^st was my last day fulfilling on the joyous, demanding opportunity of being a Staff Member.  (Though, we may also add that it may not be the final last day…)  This was, from a view, the most terrifying, adventurous, daring of choices I have made in a long time – possibly ever.   Completing this piece of my life has been the oddest and wondrous of experiences.  It has been bittersweet and heart-aching, and delightful and breathtaking all in the same moment.  I am clear there is something out in the world, in my own being, that awaits discovery and to be meticulously wrestled with.  That something lies in wait to be captured, exposed, and wondered at—something new but also known, there to take on and master.

So, for whatever will be next, I know and promise it will be taken on with passion and spirit; that it will be approached with the grace and wisdom of someone who has been thoroughly trained to make a most powerful and impactful difference.

And to the body of 400 plus human beings gracing the world with your white nametags and bold aliveness, I promise you will be proud of me.