When Toci-heart Suzanne emailed a piece she had written about a chance encounter with someone who shifted her assumptions in a big way. I loved it so much I wanted to share it with you. So here you go. Thanks, Suzanne!
I recently volunteered at a week-long event in the Austin area. About mid-week, I drove a fellow volunteer back to his apartment to pick up his volunteer crew shirt. In his mid-twenties, nicely muscled, wearing sweats, a knit cap and beat up shoes, he had arrived for our shared shift a bit late. I found myself judging him as “lazy” and “inattentive”, for who could be late AND forget their “uniform”? But nobody else was available who could drive and help him out, and the kid DID need his crew shirt. So, just to have something to do in an otherwise slow part of the shift, I agreed to assist.
He spent our first few minutes together with his head down, attention on his smart phone, answering my questions about where we were heading in a somewhat distracted manner. I presumed he was preoccupied with communicating with his friends about who knows what. (Great, I thought to myself. He can’t even carry on a conversation with the live person sitting next to him.} With the traffic backup in the downtown area, I was anticipating a long, silent ride.
But as he looked up occasionally, I would slip in a question or two, trying to engage him. You know, like, what’s your name, where are you from. His name was unusual, and he patiently told me 3 times before I caught on that it was NOT the typical western name of “Brian”. He cheerfully said his parents hadn’t known how to spell Brian, but in the end he hadn’t wanted to change it. I met that with a yeah, well, better to keep the uniqueness and have to tell people 14 times before they get it right than to be ordinary. That made him smile. (I wondered why his parents hadn’t known how to spell “Brian”, but I didn’t ask!)
With this ice breaker, we launched into other small talk. He mentioned that he’s a film-maker, creative designer and artist and was getting ready to move to LA. Over the next few minutes, I learned he’d earned a full-ride scholarship to UT-Austin through the McCombs School of Business (really?! Wow!). But once he arrived on campus, he became much more interested in exploring and learning as much as he could rather than “just” making good grades. Which is how he found himself in the creative arts field, developing a flair and affinity for story telling through film. He had just graduated with a combined degree in RTF and Business! (Hmm, I thought, there’s a lot more to this young man than meets the eye! I felt myself starting to grow curious.)
I shared that I, too, was an artist, and we talked media and favorite subjects for a bit. I then said I’d been on artistic hiatus for awhile and had spent the last few years pursuing shamanic, spiritual and energetic development. His eyes lit up at that, and he exclaimed “I’ve gotten into meditation recently!” (Can you hear my prejudices getting bumped hard? A 20-something who’s discovered the power and utility of transcendental meditation?)
He waxed eloquently about how he’d stumbled onto the practice as a means of dealing with a specific personal challenge. He shared freely about how he now finds space in the middle of a distressing situation to just breathe, be still, and ALLOW the steps that need to be taken to arise and unfold from within. (At this point, I find I am really starting to like this kid for his open-hearted awareness, and his ability to connect and share. NOW I’m paying full attention to his story!)
Turns out he grew up in the slums of a large city in Colombia and moved to Florida when he was 6. Growing to maturity in the US, but returning to Colombia almost every year to visit family, he began his dual-cultured life – one rooted in the love for his native homeland and the people in it, with all its unpredictability, pain, joyfulness and richness in personal connection, and the other filled with gratitude for the opportunities, safety, abundance and comforts of his adopted home.
But he hadn’t realized what kind of horror and heartbreak he’d witnessed as a young child until he got into the US and had enough experience with an alternative way of life. Nor had he understood how deeply those early experiences had affected him. But now, through his meditation practice, he was finding the ability to recognize and hold some of his traumatic childhood pain, which was driving many of his own reactions in the present day. For example, he now understands why he can wait in line for an hour to receive a much-anticipated meal, and then feel compelled to give the food to a homeless man standing just outside the waiting area rather than eating it himself. As a child in the slums, he had often gone hungry for days in a row!
“You just have to be grateful for what you have every day” this young man said. “When you are homeless, you never know when you are going to get to eat. So I am grateful to go hungry once in awhile now because it reminds me that I’m not going hungry all the time anymore.”
He strongly recommended anything creative as a stress outlet, but especially that I should write, often and long, asking myself the questions that matter to me, seeking answers to my troubles. (Which is the same advice I’ve heard from other teachers, mentors and coaches with many more years of life experience behind them than this bright young fellow!) Then he shared his current writing habit: each day, he writes one page of all his blessing, one page of “regular” journalling, and one page on something he’s curious about, something he’s been thinking about, or something he’s puzzling over how to integrate into his next piece of art, film or writing. He said it provides him with lots of fodder for future projects. I tell him I think the practice is brilliant for other reasons, too. His practice instills the habit of focusing on what’s working well, tracking what he’s doing in his life, and feeding what draws him forward.
At this point, I’m actively thanking him, for I have also used writing as a tool to find clarity and peace of mind, but my approach had been simply to fill 3 pages with stream-of consciousness flow. About 90% of such writing is mental noise and emotional whining, 7-8% of it reveals a creative idea, solution or insight to a problem. In the remaining 2-3%, I swear the Universe uses me to speak, and the experience is both bewildering and inspiring. Though this approach is cleansing and cathartic, each time I have adopted the practice, I eventually abandon it after a few months because I’m tired of “listening” to all my own whining! I am really excited about integrating this young man’s approach into my writing projects. I suspect both approaches have their place, each serving a different set of needs.
My new friend said he would love to live in Colombia someday and help the people there, but for now he recognizes that his greatest opportunities lie here in the US. I suggested that maybe in the not too distant future, the skills and contacts he would be building here, or rather, in his soon-to-be home of Los Angeles, would enable him to serve that dream someday.
We parted back at our volunteer crew room with ease, my own heart full for having met another human in a way that was meaningful and genuine, aware that I would have missed this opportunity had I listened to my initial sub-conscious prejudices. I was more willing to consider that the easy-going attitude I originally perceived wasn’t laziness nor lack of care at all, but one of appreciation and relaxed confidence that life is good, and that solutions to problems will arise.
Oh, and I learned that all the initial distraction with the phone wasn’t even social. He was working out a problem with technical support regarding the computer that has the bulk of his latest creative work on it!
So here’s to you, my young inspiring friend! Best of luck to you in your future endeavors. And thank you for enriching my world!
Namaste.
