3.31.16 What lies within

     Years ago, when i was working in my practice, I'd often go on vacation, return, and put words and pictures all over the wall, the story of my time away. Of going to a cabin in the woods, where the night sky shifted in the overhead window all night long, and the morning meal was made on the porch with a camp stove, after wandering down the pine covered path to the most-beautiful-outhouse-in-the-world. Or small moments from hikes, from small experiences at the ocean or off in the woods.

     I'd put things all over the wall, and all these wonderful people who filled my practice from all those years would come in for their appointments, with themselves or their partners or their babies or kids or adolescents or dogs or cats or ducks or chickens or older parents or best friends.

     And they'd be all excited that there was something new. Sometimes people would say, when I'd taken the stuff down, 'Can you put up something new soon?'

And then they would tell me their own adventures, while we figured out supplements and conditions, or I worked on them, on the table.

     Kids would tell me their stories while they and their parents and siblings sat on the floor, next to the toy bookshelf, with all kinds of things strewn all across the floor, so that the next client had to step around stuff, and I"d sweep it aside with my foot, as i laughed, and welcomed them on in.

     Teenagers would smile as they excluded their parents from the office, then tell me all kinds of things, about how they felt inadequate or were figuring things out, or funny things they had been going and doing, and we'd laugh and laugh.

Old people would tell me what was so hard and heartbreaking and lonely, and then tell me wonderful things they once did, or the place they and their kid went to eat last week, that was really so nice.

     One woman rode horses around the Pyramids at dawn.

Others climbed mountains and figured out bookkeeping marvels and told off huge elks in Washington State and quietly swam with otters.I never knew what would come my way that had been in theirs.

     I'd learn so many stories of so many lives, that have all all stayed with me. I never even had time to imagine all that would come to a close. But it did. Things in our lives do. Come to a close.

     And what we learn about is what remains.

If you think about it, you can have so much mean hateful suspicious stuff that remains with you forever.

     Or you can have the vestiges of wonderful experiences that you have had, or shared with others. That enrich your every day onward.

     I think most of us are pretty human, pretty well intentioned much of the time, and pretty imperfect, struggling along, learning to be the best person we can be.

In that way, it's all kind of perfect. What we chose. How we were in the world, no matter others being more true and kind or less.

     We end up with the life we crafted, with the materials and the ability we have had.

And all that remains all within us and without us.