Post Holidays

From the time my son was six years old he quickly learned that he could make me and his two sisters laugh hysterically with childish antics. Over the years he developed rehearsed routines, such as flinging himself down a flight of stairs (carpeted) with a crashing thump at the end. He would then jump up, as soon as he hit the floor, shouting "I'm OK, ..I'm OK !

I have not posted an entry on my blog since the holidays began. December is a hard month for my patients. Losing someone you love or being diagnosed with a terminal illness over the holidays is traumatic to say the least. So I often feel as though I have fallen down the stairs and jumped back up around the second week in January. I'm OK..I'm OK !

As the New Year begins I take inventory on my life. Count the blessings, curse the misfortunes. Then register the misfortunes as minor, two fender benders, a broken dryer, and a dead goldfish. I feel OK about the tally.

I was reading Nelson Mandela's inspirational speech "Our Deepest Fear" which led me to some of the poems and essays of "The essential Rumi" and then Marianne Williamson's book "A Return to Love."

This new year finds me taking the full plunge, bag and baggage, back into love. Being a clinician of the emotional and physical sciences can be a detriment. Too much introspective research. But being a romantic and eternal optimist often balances things out. I just finished deleting a whole paragraph on the studies of social involvements and intimacy. The physiological results of connectedness, attachment and isolation, from actually a very interesting book, "Intimate Terrorism" Thank me later for the deletion.

From the more positive and definitely more mature perspective please enjoy a few verses from "The Invitation" taken from Marianne Williamson's book.

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
And if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow.
If you have been opened by life's betrayals,
or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy,
mine or your own.
If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes,
without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the
limitations of being human.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours or mine
and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon
"Yes!"

I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside,
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)