You're Not the Only One

“You’re not the only one.”  That’s what he was really saying.  Your shit isn’t special, but it is important.  The fact that I’m here listening to this guy is another cosmic joke the Universe is playing on me.  The more I learn, the less -- it turns out -- I know.  So I start all over again like I’ve done so many times before.  Beginner’s mind.  Never done.  Always searching for that elusive “more.”

See, that’s the thing.  In this day and age, everyone’s an expert.  Maybe it’s the money, but they all sound like they’ve got it down, all covered.  But not here.  Not with this man.  What ever happened to that almost extinct species, humility?  It was shut away long ago in a zoo pen, so forgotten they’ve stopped locking the gate, assuming it doesn’t have the will to step out again.

But in this room, it does.  It has taken a bold step beyond the threshold and has found its quiet but powerful voice once more.  I hear it in his voice.  He is a Lakota chief, a medicine man, a Sun Dancer.  I feel it in his presence.  I see in his eyes a life that has died a thousand deaths, has made a thousand sacrifices.  And with each new rising, his light, his fire grows brighter.  

You don’t trifle with this man, and yet he loves you.  Unconditionally.  Failure is not an option because it does not exist.  It’s all just a bunch of do-overs, hard fights before the glorious fall into the peonies’ folds, soft pink and white.  Relishing that fall, relishing that bottom.  I have a fantastic excuse now to do nothing, to lie naked, to cry my eyes out, to just be.  Just breathe.  Just come to a dead stop and smell those flowers another day.

And so it begins again.  Every door from one vast room opening to another, and another, and another.  I never want it to end.  Why would I?  Why would anyone?