Spring Cleaning and Change

Sunshine helps. So does rest. But even on cloudy days filled with fatigue, the resiliency persists.  Bliss and happiness continue in deep and meaningful ways. The Grand Adventure continues so fruitfully there are not enough hours in the day or days in the week. Were it not that I love what I’m doing, I might be called a workaholic.

Everything on the ‘to do ‘  list is not comfortable and the pace of life is speeded twice over. Sometimes I just want to stare at the clouds and try on words. “The charcoal gray accumulation of water logged air took up space between blue and white that gave some prescient foreshadowing of ‘not rain’ “. Sometimes I just want to be precious with words. Nonetheless, the new life suits me.

The new life. The fresh start. The victory. The overcoming. The outlasting. The beyond. The ‘don’t look back’. The open hand. The deep cleansing breath. These are the short titles to my present. Every minute is a new joyful unknown. I am blessed.

So it was that that I noticed, and discarded, the quasi-greeting meant to hurt me.

As I turned to retrieve my coffee out of the line for ordering, I said, “Hi!” with my usual cheerfulness of tone and demeanor. The tilted chin, expressionless visage, eyes that held judgment and didn’t, wouldn’t, quite meet mine posed in front of me. ‘Hello, Deborah” came the formal, stiff response that seemed to be wearing pearls and a fur wrap. I ,the scullery maid in the little scenario, immediately discerned a dismissal and said nothing more.

In a moment, an attitude within me  overwhelmed. Stuff started sliding off me like I was greased up for chasing pigs. Long had I taken situations where I thought there was a conflict, of either greater or lesser proportions ,and invited the other party into conversation. I was of the persuasion to believe it was just a difference of opinion, and conversation and discussion would dissolve the conflict.

In this case, the scenario was different. I knew what the origin of said judgmental feeling from declared respondent was. It was a lie. A giant hoax. I had watched an entire group of people who had been no where near the situation for which they were all jumping to a defense, get engrossed in a falsehood they  argued as fact with enormous vigor. I saw an entourage  embrace deception with enthusiasm usually reserved for sporting events or political causes.

How can you have a conversation with people who would just as soon tell you the headlines on the Enquirer were verifiable fact; that a bat child had given birth to rabbits? You can’t. They want to be deceived. They like to believe the worst. The drama suits them and they will alter what their very eyes have seen and attest to details of what they have no first hand knowledge, as if they were carrying the tablets down from the Mt Sinai after seeing God.

So I left. For the first time in my life I wrote off an entire group of people. Always before I had believed inside every person was a desire to be better, to know truth more closely, to grow and improve in all ways. Then I learned, some people are either too afraid or too deeply committed to the comfort falsehood allows to consider change.

This is the time of year when culling and shedding is in full force in many people’s lives. Spring cleaning. Relational shedding lightens the load as much as any clothes that aren’t part of daily wear or sentimental remembrances headed to a thrift store can.

Freed from the baggage of others’ ignorance based judgment, searching only for connections with people who love finding new truth and take issue only with first hand situations, I liberated myself from, God love ‘em, the needy who don’t want to be full and the pretentious who guard against discomfort.

This is a huge change for me. Honestly, it’s like I added an extra hour, and extra day...the very thing I needed to embrace the new life I’ve been blessed with. I was willing to give up knocking my head against other people’s brick walls and instead found myself building a whole new foundation. Lovely. Inside my body, physical knots have untied themselves.

If you have been waiting to shed some non productive relationships, I heartily support you. It will be painful but it is going to leave room for other, more beautiful, relationships. If they don’t want to change, to heal, to grow...you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him swim on his back. It takes two.

Let equity prevail in your life. It’s a most life giving, loving action on so many levels. Explore the possibilities.

Love, Deborah