“There’s a box of crayons in my heart,” I sing to the crew of six-year-olds patiently waiting by their cubbies. Giggles reward the line and one skeptical blue-eyed gaze.
“No,” he informs me after the crescendo of laughter has gently ceased, “there’s not.”
I remember his keen interest in an anatomy book, a book from home he brought in to share, and how he enthusiastically explained how air enters and leaves the lungs. There’s poetry in his practical perception of the body. I redirect.
“Is there blood in my heart?”
“Yes.”
“And what color is that blood?”
“RED!”
The crayon remark melts away. And he’s back to being the brightly engaged delight-of-a-student I know him to be because he’s been seen in his curiosity and knowledge about anatomy.
Releasing resistance, relaxing behind the reaction, returns me to being real with the people in front of me. Genuine presence is the healing tonic we quietly yearn for and so desperately need in order to proceed and thrive onward and through.
I know there’s blood circulating through my heart, and maybe there’s a box of crayons, too, and the colors I devise to animate the oceanic movements of my heart would be dramatic and chaotic swirls of dark blue and streaks of green.
Choosing colors for those tumultuous tides reminds me to stay on the shore of witnessing, but this month those waves threaten to consume. And there’s a longing in that salt-water to be met in the depths, in the raw intensity that is wired into experiencing this human being journey, but honestly, this is a heart-truth pining I always feel.
If I’m hurting and swimming and aching to feel seen, supported, loved in my shadow, then so are those close-by or perhaps distant.
We’re making the best decisions we know how to make that might carry us closer to feeling a little less alone, a little more understood. And the moment the anguish transcends to communicate a global ache, I feel a little stronger in the compassion that lets me see the six-year-old wanting to share how he understands and honors the awe of the human heart.
And for right now, for this, life is enough.
I indulge in a late-night Google quest: “Why are know-it-alls so annoying?”
Then, I begrudgingly remember that all my irritations mirror my own shortcomings and perceived flaws.
Sigh. I can’t google that answer, so I get curious.
The know-it-all in question triggers my undercurrent feelings of inadequacy. Acknowledging this energetic reaction frees me to just be. Attempting to school the know-it-all distracts, drains and drives my ego into a self-righteousness that reflects the energy I’m itching to control and to correct. Instead of proving someone wrong and losing my power in some petty debate, I practice presence to create the internal space to stay strong in being.
Presence speaks.
Often when I hear this person spin off on a tutorial that no one asked for, I breathe instead of eye-roll (but sometimes I do eye-roll and that’s all right, I’m learning) and accept this teacher for being as they are in this exact moment of time and for teaching me to remain grounded in presence and my own peace. If I need to speak up for myself, the words emerge in a neutrality that is empowering, because I haven’t squandered energy on resisting and reacting to what-is. I have a clear understanding of how this person operates and let the rest be as it is.
So I start Googling body language cues that a guy is into you and that’s a much more pleasant topic to research indeed.
All I want to say, again and again, in whispers of prayers and emoji decorated texts, is thank you for offering me grace.
The owls hoot to us. We look up into fading dusk and marvel to see two majestic owls peering down at us -- a Libra and a Gemini talking meridian lines, Qi Chong moves for the liver and lungs, and how dresses should be worn every day in the spring.
One feathered king flaps his wings and flies into nighttime adventures that await around the springs. His royal companion remains on the tree branch, darting her head and hooting a speech to the stunned earthlings below.
She’s magic, this friend of mine. She appreciates the owls as much as I do, as curiously comforting cosmic messengers, and grants me all the space to be in spirited wonder and super human insecurity.
She’s a healer, this friend of mine, and trains a loving practitioner gaze upon a complexion in full revolt against a familiar product abruptly changed, and in time, I may be thankful for this, because it’s resurfacing a root cause not rewritten for optimal wellbeing.
Liver. Lungs. Blood.
Stress. Presence. Do I have trouble staying present?
I don’t always feel safe, in this body, in this sensitive skin, as myself on this planet, and the daydreams are the drugs for escape. Only, this fear, this internal brooding of stress shows up loudly on my face, on how I present myself to the world, and it’s there to be reckoned with and to ask for an inner support that demands a determined practice of self-love, of self-giving.
Everything flows back to self-love, like blood. And then travels outward to bloom, or hoot, to fly upward and forward from there.
“There are many causalities of war, but laughter isn’t one of them.”
The opening line from Larry Charles’ “Dangerous World of Comedy” ignites a visceral reaction, an instant gut truth, a truth about the power of humor that pulls me closer and closer to the purifying flame that is comedy.
Instantly, I am riveted. I watch with devoted attentiveness to the stories of stand-up comics risking their lives to reveal corruption, hypocrisy, gift their country with a laughter that lifts and unifies. After the first episode, I retreat in a daze back to my room. I sit with my feelings, I sort through my thoughts. I feel the echo of that brutal and brilliant show. And I feel what I felt years ago when I played “The Happy Vagina” (no surprise!) in Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” how humor could be utilized to collectively heal, and this seizes me in a clarifying vision of what I intend to do with improv, with comedy.
And I share the vision with that owl-wise friend of mine, and she says, “Now, be present.”
Present with it all.