I never realised just how intensive some
people go through life being immersed in being peeved. Not just the irrational
annoyed with a situation or moment. Rather the continuous grumpy disposition at
all and sundry. Then to top it off they get irrationally irate at those who
find life like a large colourful lollipop – there for all to enjoy and have a
taste of. This comment comes from a direct experience I just had while on a
study trip to a land composed of drastic contrasts and contradictions. I had
decided to do something that I had never done to date – go on a study trip and
share a room with a fellow traveller whom I did not know. I had considered this
would be of benefit for me not just from a financial situation but also to be
able to share and explore new experiences together while being in a foreign
land. It was instead a powerful lesson in the diversity and contrasts of human
nature and its strong play on the individual.
My room colleague was a Russian,
pensioned maths teacher. A mother and grandmother, who also taught Qigong but
not that from my teacher’s method but another school. She and I had had one
short conversation on the phone prior to deciding to share a room but had not
met before hand. I met her the first time in the first hotel we were to share in
Chengdu, China, as the keys for the rooms where handed out. My first impression
was on her very downward turned mouth and set facial expression, a sign of
someone who was feeling imposed upon I thought.
I find having been working in the
gastronomy now for over thirty-two years that my gauging of a persons
personality, from the first facial contact to an actual verbal interaction
leaves me in good stead for what to expect. I am rarely off track with my first
impression either. We humans are very expressional creatures on our outside
casing that is when it comes to showing our inwardly views, outwardly and I am
usually right on line in reading “between the lines” the face over from me. I
am also very adaptable when it comes to “fitting in” and this can be to my
disadvantage, for I will take care to smooth out a situation or make sure
another has a comfortable position before checking to see how I fair. It comes
from both my boarding school experience of feeling the need to have a secure
place and my not wanting to “rock the boat”, my forced upon responsibility as
an older sister to be mother and carer due to family circumstances, as well as
my business sense/ethnic of creating an environment for others to feel right at
home in, for me to work in.
Hence so it was here on my so-called
holiday/study trip. I noted
quickly what was the outwardly situation, also sensing from my intuitive stand
something was not right here with this lady at this present moment. This immediately
proved correct as she stated she was exhausted from the flight and just wanted
to rest and not have all the hassle of having to deal right now with this
strange land. I on the other hand had also been on my travelling legs for over
twenty-four hours but was raring to get going and explore the mixture of sounds
and smells from my surroundings that were pulling at all my senses. It was like
the anticipation on Christmas morning before your parents had woken up and you
had sneaked down to peek underneath the Christmas tree, if perhaps there had been
a transformation around it over night (from its bare “alone stand” to an
overabundant volume of expansion of pressies from Santa which nestled
underneath the branches just waiting to be opened) waiting with your name on a
tag for you to open. I was literally bursting at the seams to “go!”
So I already began then and there to
fall into my “self made” trap that I think I know and thought I had mastered
but strangely seem to continuously forget. I started to smooth things over,
which is for me a “second nature trait” and console with words of
encouragement, as we prepared to “refresh” ourselves, my room partner to meet
up with the group again. I was very focused on getting everything possible out
of this study trip and that is also how I actually see myself in living life
too. I have had a bucket full of dramatic situations in my forty-eight years (I
wonder what sometimes I consciously signed up for when I discussed my life plan
for this period?) and if I have learnt for me personally, anything from these “occurrences”
it is to keep my eyes focused on what is ahead, my mind open to experiencing
what I am given, my ears ready to hear a new possibility and to allow my soul,
the chance to explore the channels for growth that open up. I was going to get
a full dosage of my own ideology or “medicine” on this trip and more.
So a three-week period of walking in the
shoes I preach and that I wear literally began. How can one be an adult yet
feel again ten years of age? How can you know what you are doing “automatically”
on some kind of crazy autopilot and still kick yourself at the same time for
doing it? How can your adult self take the hand of the child within you when
you’re aching and redirect your footsteps to a smoother path? By me it was with
a lot of physical pain and mental aguish.
For I had to realize what I often over look, due to wanting to help, is
my own well being - for not everyone likes to see the sunny side of life. Not
all can embrace the differences we each have, with an acceptance that “all is
good”, just as it is. Not everyone even wants to. Hell who wants the sugary
seal?! I am not everyone though (maybe you have guessed that) and I must
acknowledge that some people love to complain, sigh, willow delightfully in a
sour soup of frustration, discontentment and pain.
Why on earth anyone would take this
agenda for their life path is beyond me but when you have the choice to
experience something else I know we all learn at different speeds and
timetables than each other. For although my glass is always half full, a lot of
people find the amount in their glass continuously needing to be “re-topped”.
So it was that I lived fourteen days of sharing the new experiences of
understanding “Yangsheng” (to develop ones own caring of your own life
essences) in a very “hands on”, direct manner from both an eastern and
westernized view. I came to see that my attitude is for some a magnet to being
able themselves to “open up” to something new and different, while for others
it is a “thorn in their side” because they wish to condemn rather than uplift
their fellow human being; placing themselves on a pedestal of being “better”.
But most importantly I saw I cannot and
should not place myself down because another has chosen to step along a pathway
I do not find empowering or benefitting me. It is of highest importance that we not only live our
belief’s with a caring and loving heart but also that we do not lie to
ourselves by denying our happiness because of the well being of another’s. I
can try to support you in your choices but it does not mean I should give up my
balance to create at all costs a smoother experience for you. I afterwards
(this above mentioned period) got a room of my own for the last leg of the trip
and noticed immediately a stone weight lift from my shoulders, as I continued
to explore China.
Caring for our life energies requires
that we are honest with ourselves. I love life. Whether it gives me a heck of a
lot of hard knocks (and shit it has) or lavishes me with colourful flowers of a
sweet smelling nature (which I embrace) I want to share unconditionally what I
see, experience, live; with you and I expect from you nothing in return. It is
how I am. I will give often beyond the healthy boundaries of giving (for me
personally) and I found out on this trip, once again that is not how you
nourish your life energies, it is rather how they become blocked or inhibited
to expanding when you yourself stand in their way. It was for me a definite “at
last” eye opener to how I need to readdress where I invest my time and
immediate awareness. It showed me that I should evaluate when it is profitable
for me to “go ahead” or “ release immediately” a feeling, an item or a
situation before it saps away at my core. It took a woman whom stood “against
me” to tell me; “leave me alone with your attitude” to wake up to the fact some
people do not want joy. They wallow in gloom and want to stay stuck there. They
need to be dragged down and beaten. I saw clearly I am not at fault either for
this situation or any other. I just live on another plane and that is good so
and I can live with that.
So when you read this reflect, upon how
you view life. How you like to nourish your system in the mental and spiritual
levels as well as the physical. Accept that it is your way and get on with your
day. Join not in another’s “style of being” unless you want to. Really inwardly
want to. Take on only that, which you can stand by, only that which you want to
carry. Leave all the other “crap” on the wayside. Remember you decide how your
day will unfold. No one else has the power to tell you how it will or wont
develop. No one person can tell you to stop being happy, loving life and living
it to the fullest or giving freely away your happiness to others for them to
embrace if they wish to be touched by your infection for being empowered by
life itself. You are your own person. You are the rays of sunshine or the
liquid jewels of light captured in the rain if you want to be. You need not be
the freezing hailstones or thunderclouds of another’s barometer to life’s
seasonal mood swings.
You are who you want to be. I am I and I
leave you to be you. You have the choice to step into my zone or you can leave
me be. It is ok to acknowledge this and just simply be. It is healthy to know
how to be and nourish that which helps you grow and live.
I was walking back from climbing over
11,000 steps to the Forbidden City upon the holy, Wudang mountains (a 14th
century old temple region that is classified under the UNESCO World Heritage
Site); it was misty, tropical hot and dismal. No view beyond my hand. I was
taking my time to return to my hotel.
A Taoist monk suddenly fell in step with
me. He turned towards me and asked in English (how did he know I spoke
English?) “Have you just come from the pilgrimage?” (Climbing the mountain)
“Yes I have” I answered. “Did you feel disappointed because you had not a view
today?” he asked. I answered; “I
chose to climb a way which required only that I look to where my feet landed. Noticing what was within my immediate
region. Nothing more was asked of me. I needed to do no more than that. It was
perfect just as it was” I answered.
His reply blew me over. It still sits
with me today deep in the crease’s of my soul. “In the Chinese folk we say that
heaven created us all. Therefore we all have a purpose to be here. You have
found your way. You walk the Tao and that is a blessing.” He then dissolved
into the fog and I returned to my hotel. Anti-climax? Reality. Truth. Never
forget you know what it is you need to do. Walk with patience and care along
your path and all will evolve as it should.
Your Koruswhispers