This one was a difficult one to write, and it’s full of that tricky word, I. That’s because it’s also full of that tricky activity of peering into I to see what’s up in the darkness.
I’ve been thinking about preparedness. I missed something important in my dog-walking lesson. This is what I missed:
Sometimes, now and then, my expectations outdo my readiness, and sometimes they take me in a not-so-good direction.
(You know what they say about expectations, right? No? Here: An expectation is a premeditated resentment.)
“Being prepared for life means living the kind of life where the things that I am preparing for don’t need preparation. I don’t always know what will happen or what other people will do, but I can choose to always know what I will do.”
The something important that I missed is the foundation of all the rest. Guess what? I don’t always know what I will do. I only know who I will be.
The peace – presence – power paradigm I wandered into a few weeks back is real, but now I’ve discovered something new about it. It only really comes true when I let go of expectations and let myself rest in absolute acceptance of who I am, where I am, when I am. When I reach that place, what I do doesn’t matter so much. I know it will be okay, whatever it is, so long as I’m okay with me.
It turns out that in the strange meeting where I expected to be businesslike and professional, I had unbusinesslike things to say, unprofessional pain to express, fair criticism to communicate, and tears to cry. So that, all of that, is what I did.
I thought, before I went to the meeting, that the magical three Ps (peace, presence, power) were direct routes to fulfilling my expectations: I expected to say important things with untouchable and frightening detachment. I was going to be unbreakable, unshakable. I was going to teach them a thing or two.
Instead, I found a voice I didn’t know I had and strength to let tears come along. I cried from beginning to end (soft tears running from my eyes), but my heart was untroubled. My tears, my friend said later, were there to clean up and carry away my weakness.
I like that.
I let my weakness fall away with my tears, and I said important things with honesty, clarity, and a vulnerability that I would never have planned in my quest for superwoman. My walking-the-dog self stepped aside, lifted the mist, let me speak and held my hand so that my steady voice said everything that had to be said. Steady and soft, but I felt the floorboards tremble as my words sank slowly to the ground.
My weakness wasn’t my inability to be an unreal, unblinking woman of steel. My weakness was my determination to be someone I’m not.
There may have been lessons learned by the others in that room. That doesn’t matter to me. The important thing is that I learned. For one thing, I let go of my expectation that I will act the part of a person I’m not. I don’t want to pretend that tears are weakness. I don’t want to pretend that professionalism precludes personhood.
I do want to walk the dog again.