Hope

Jimenez

When hope is not pinned wriggling on a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens like one of those fluted Japanese blossoms, flimsy and spastic, bright and warm. This almost always happens in community.

Anne Lamott

The Impossible Will Take A Little While: Plan B

This arrived in my inbox today.  Made me smile.

Feels like an allegory for how “Yes” works.

I think for me the key to staying in Yes is in the first part of the first sentence.

It seems to me that expectations have to do with not really listening.

With not really being in the moment…

When I cling to my idea of a relationship or a situation and in trying to make what I wish happen, I end up missing the truth of the moment. I stop the flow of life in and around me. I begin to feel deprived and my investment in my ideal is so sure that the only way to accept the outcome of the strangled life force is to tell myself all sorts of lies about what’s true. I build an illusion therefore. I tell myself that some thing’s not right with that person…instead of seeing that I stopped the flow of loving because I couldn’t accept that person, place, thing or situation just the way it is in this moment…and those moments which unfold after.

Its the “I want what I want when I want it.” syndrome.

If I was told what’s true and actions match, and I still hold on to my divergent vision of things…who is really to blame if I’m not getting what I want and need? Who is really lying to whom?

In that moment when I marry my ideal instead of embracing my partner’s (and ‘partner’ can mean neighbor, child, friend, lover) heart and truth, it ceases to matter what the partner of my heart wants.

And that kills things between us.

And there’s something else.

When I’m listening and in Yes, I hear what’s true.

If a person truly isn’t trustworthy, I will hear what’s true.

When things aren’t trustworthy, actions and words will not match or will be consistently inconsistent.

Usually its not that they aren’t trustworthy, but that they are not compatible with my own view of how relationship should be guided and constructed.

Not doing it my way doesn’t make them wrong or untrustworthy.

Just different.

Sometimes intuition or a sense of lies being present isn’t about that other person. Its about lying to myself about the situation because I’ve not got what I want out of it…because I wasn’t listening…because I had the ‘I want what I want’ syndrome…because I built lies about reality instead of accepting what’s true.

There is a difference between my intuition screaming about the lies of another and my own lies to myself. The intuition just screams about lies. It doesn’t necessarily say “you” or “them”. To get that part of the message you’ve got to apply a little mindfulness and logic.

But its taken me a long, long time to see the difference.

In order to make the change in how my intuition works and in order to stop building a case against others, I had to grow beyond making my partners in relationship into a Mommy or Daddy who are responsible for giving my inner child what she needs.

That they do things differently than I want or can’t give me what I need or don’t tell me something immediately, knowing I can’t accept it anyway and because I will punish them if I know…? Even though they told me how it is?

Well that certainly does not make them a liar or wrong or bad.

It is what it is.

And I can still love them and respect them even if they don’t give me what I want or think I need or actually do need.

I will instead just not choose to invest myself in a certain kind of relationship with that person. And that’s a beautiful outcome for all concerned. And the flow never ceased and I made a good friend and I’m free to love more and others…

That’s how ‘hope’ and ‘yes’ work for me in a daily life style.

Its a very peaceful way to live my life.

I’m really glad I’ve got this stone.