A Chance to Learn, Teach and Connect
Have you felt lately that there’s a disconnect amongst people, especially between generations?
Working on my laptop moments ago I overheard my husband reacting out loud to an email he’d just received. “Are you kidding me? Doesn’t this guy know what to do? We’ve been dealing with his company for years!” As he finished his outburst and without thinking, as though I’d been programmed to auto-respond, I said “It is now your opportunity to teach him.”
As I finished saying this, something inside me reverberated like a low voltage current running through my body. And just like that, it rebooted my system and I was filled with inspiration to write again. Words have power.
For the past few weeks, I’d been feeling unmoved, disconnected, uninspired, and somewhat gloomy, which is extremely rare for me. I wondered if it was related to diet, routine, or environment but, with that innate and unplanned response, I realized that what I’d been feeling was a derailment from my mission in life.
I’ve always been a connector, a quiet ambassador bringing people together and sharing ideas. With something as small as my husband’s verbal eruption, my reset button was pushed. Thank goodness! There’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning with a purposeless feeling. With this electrical nudging, I realized the roadblock was where I was focusing. It was time to change course.
I don’t buy into the idea of a successive and invariable life existence: be born, go to school, get a job, make money, get married, have children, and die. When we get stuck in this kind of thinking, we miss out on the beauty of life and disconnect from others who may have different world views.
Evolution is non-linear. As with plants, the circular or elliptical orbits of atoms and planets never clash but work in perfect harmony with each other.
The patterns of plants are miraculous and absolutely beautiful because they’re not straight. Look at the design of the sunflower. It follows the Fibonacci pattern: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144… Each number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers. It doesn’t follow a straight pattern of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
Similarly, life does not unfold in sequence, despite what we have been conditioned to believe. I know. I followed that path and taught our children that course. Luckily I’m still around to course correct and share with them more evolved ways of thinking.
How often have you set out steps to reach a goal only to find that you had to adjust the path? When we lead unyielding lives, we get off track because nature does not behave in a straight line nor independently of other objects. Life makes detours along the way and when we know this, it’s easier to navigate. Problems, bumps and bends on the road propel us forward.
Yesterday, while lunching with one of my dearest friends and her daughter, another “automated response” came out of me. The young scholar shared a challenge she’s facing as she plans her career. I shared with her that problems are given to us because the Universe loves us. Can you imagine how boring life would be if we knew that everything will go according to plan? There would be little adventure in our lives. Blockages force us to look for new venues and other possibilities.
Our fates are not predetermined. The Universe never takes our power of choice away. Quite the oppositive. We can respond or react to problems and thus create the outcome for any situation. The double-slit experiment in quantum physics explains how this works.
We’re here to be in community, not in competition. Our purpose is to interact, experience diversity, and have contrast. Life comes with adjustments, twists, and turns. A linear existence is not only an outdated way of thinking but a seriously erroneous belief that no longer serves humanity. It suggests that we exist alone.
As the double-slit experiment shows, until we look at, pay attention to, or decide to observe something, everything is just an infinite possibility. We’re powerful, we’re in control and we get to choose.
Problems are the Universe’s way of showing us that we have infinite choices in how to see and experience life. We can let a difficult situation keep us down or we can use it as a stepping stone to rise. Why do we perceive something as “bad” when we have the freedom to see it as an opportunity to do something better or differently?
To illustrate this point, one year ago my youngest son was devastated after breaking up with his girlfriend of some years. At the time he couldn’t stop comparing his situation with his friends, many of who are already married. He was convinced that he had “lost” eight years of his life and could not fathom that this situation meant that he now had endless new and wonderful possibilities.
At his lowest point, somehow he managed to get on a plane to Greece to attend his best friend’s engagement party, only to meet the woman of his dreams. He’s now engaged and planning to marry soon.
In 2003, shortly after returning from my first volunteer trip abroad to Bolivia, I had the calling to start a non-religious NGO for individuals to participate in short-term international projects to serve poor and homeless populations. Friends thought that I was mad because they knew that my husband and I were going through a financial crisis. We had no money for basics, let alone, for lofty goals. Little did I know that a chat with a friend, recounting my wonderful experiences, would result in her law firm creating, incorporating, and representing the humanitarian agency that I spearheaded for some years. The Universe doesn’t deal in currency. It doesn’t understand business plans or linear projections. It hears us through our feelings, and our vibrational frequencies, and it responds accordingly. The more we tell it we like something, the more of it we get!
What does all this have to do with my husband’s outburst about an email? Simply that, though we’ve been conditioned to think and expect things in a timeline, we’re shortchanging ourselves by thinking this way. When things don’t go the way we’re used to, that’s our opportunity to evolve. Our greatest experiences happen when we change course.
Whether we realize it or not, each one of us is a walking book and a teacher. What are others seeing when they look at us? What are we projecting? We’ll never know if and how we affect or inspire someone. For those of us who’ve orbited this earth many more times than others, why don’t we use our experiences to teach, inspire and motivate? I’m not perfect but, I hope that by sharing my stories I’m making a difference in someone’s life and helping to connect people.