interpretive_danceIt’s easy to get over focused on getting our head around something in order to know what to do, then doing something in order to see things unfold. What in small amounts can be constructive becomes controlling in an instant and we think we’re being proactive when we’re being reactive, giving in to fear. Sometimes we’re not the one’s that need to get that project done, move things along, or see the overall picture. It is just as important for us to be the still point which helps someone else navigate the difficult passages as it is for us to take over navigating.

We are always living in a spectrum, being the older, being the younger, being the smarter and the fool, circumstances adjusting us like colored glass viewed through a kaleidoscope. Sometimes we’re meant to be on the edges traveling and mixing with others, finding our definition in opposition and combination. Other times we find ourselves in the middle, setting the pattern for the overall picture, becoming the dominant color against which all the others play.  The interesting part is that we rarely know all this in the moment. It is only after, when we get a bit of distance from the movement that we can see the picture we’ve made.

We spend so much time trying to figure out what the lesson is in things that happen.  Why me? What was that for? Why does this keep happening? What’s the lesson in all of this? The irony is that the questions presume that all events we experience are for and about us. That somehow, in all this swirling of being, in this one way we are islands separate from everyone, distinct from everything else and so each experience is a direct message, a missive to be read and understood like orders on the battlefield. However, sometimes the things that happen to us aren’t about us. Sometimes we’re the lesson that someone else is learning.