So, I met this guy who had a big impact on me because he was so contented and happy. He’d been in a 12 step recovery program for a long time and worked the steps so deeply that they’ve become for him a profound spiritual path. He’s a magnificent poet and now he’s got a disease that prevents him from moving around much. And he’s still more cool, cheerful, and happy than I’ve ever been.
When I met him, he offered to talk, so I called him. I was struggling at the time and wanted a hit of what he had. I asked him how he had been able to find such peace. And one of the things he told me that he knew to be absolutely true was that I was exactly where I needed to be.
Of course, I’d heard that before. But, coming from him, I took it to heart and began working with the idea as though it were true.
My whole life I’ve dipped in and out of thinking that the grass-is-greener somewhere else — in someone else’s life. I’ve longed to live in Southern California again, for instance, or another exciting city where I could walk to places. I’ve lamented that life didn’t give me greater wealth or a big family of healthy, happy kids. Or, I feel gypped that impulsivity, indecision, and overwhelm make so many tasks harder for me than other people I know. All of which leaves me depressed and full of self pity.
But, when I’m in one of those states of mind, if I accept that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, I stop blaming life for giving me a rotten deal. And, when I stop projecting blame outward, good things start to appear right before my eyes.
I’m not saying that what’s difficult isn’t difficult, but accepting the hard parts of my ADHD, for instance, means I don’t have to fight my resistance to having it which makes working with them lighter.
If I’m just where I’m supposed to be, then life itself is the perfect teacher, giving me exactly the challenges I need to work on.
You might ask, well, why do you need challenges to work on?
The answer, I sense, is because I’m here on earth to work through everything that prevents me from aligning more completely with love — in any and all its forms.
I know that I can’t know exactly what that means, but I know how to go toward it. And thinking life dealt me a shitty deal isn’t the way. Thinking that someone else got it so much better causes me to overlook all the love — and goodness — right in front of me.
I believe it’s my job to banish the illusion that anybody else’s grass is greener and, instead, do all I can to wake up to what’s good right in front of me. This effort — to awaken to something bigger than my ego’s BS — is the Journey to the East that Hermann Hesse wrote about. It’s the trek toward awakening to the present moment that meditation teachers teach. It’s the teaching at the heart of most religions and spiritual practices.
So, of course, I practice gratitude. I make a list everyday. And, as I look for all I’m grateful for, what I see changes. And when my vision changes, my world changes.
In the movie Land, a women devastated by the death of her husband and young child goes to a mountain cabin with a store of canned goods. No phone, no vehicle, no heat, no radio. She doesn’t know how to survive a winter in the wilderness and after several months, she gets hurt. Then, out of nowhere, a Native American guy out hunting comes upon her, and helps her: chops wood, builds fires, moves her unconscious body closer to the hearth. He comes back day after day and finally she gets better.
Later, when they’ve become friends (this is not a romance), she asks him why he helped her. And he says: “Because you were in my path.”
