On a Monday night, I boldly go to the library, starving and heart-hoping to find love.
Literature love.
A summer reading affair.
Poetic prose that will charm me, shimmer forth new horizons, crack my heart open and burn me up in empathy.
I WANT TO FEEL.
I’m unbearably lonely without a book. I crave its comforting friendship.
I yearn for that kismet connection when a book winks in soul-recognition and I feel an instant, snap knowing that this book and I are meant to be.
We will have a story. And a love story that embraces me whole, articulates secrets and feelings I had no words for, and long after the story ends, I’ll have lines I can return to and find a guidance that only the underlying energy of words can do.
These are lofty expectations to hold, just as heavy as the yoga bag I carry, as I search the library shelves for a crumb of book love.
I lug my yoga tote from fiction to graphic novels and then around the quiet bend to memoirs now hungrily scanning for any cover, title or author who kindles a spark of potential interest.
I feel like a desperate singleton determined not to leave the bar without at least some decent flirting.
My stomach loudly whines for a long overdue supper (shh! I reprimand!), and my yoga tote plump with sign-in sheets, speakers, and seashells and crystals (for energetically aligned décor) weighs on my now aching shoulder.
I don’t need a mirror to know that I’m in a fantastic state of disarray. My post-yoga ponytail slouches, the heat and grime from the day erodes and melts my makeup – eyeliner smudged, lipstick dried in red patches, a sprinkling of sparkles cling to my eyelids.
Still, the sudden and sad vision of me haunting around my beloved bungalow bored and Netflix deranged presses me on.
I reorient and resolve myself in the main mission, and then I invite myself to stay open.
When I recommit to this intention and cultivate curiosity, I spot the book, and the book knowingly waves at me, and there’s the wild leap of intuitive reading that this book will change me (as all great books do).
I leave the library with a heart buoyed by a book. I embark into the buttery melt of a Texas evening with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Their collected wisdom on conscious activism, joy, and compassion shine as my chosen summer reading and life-altering guides.
In the charged reaction, there is a trauma.
Inner child trauma.
I freeze.
I do not flee. I do not fight. I freeze.
In paralysis, I forget my power. I forget that I always have had and always will have the right to choose, to decide, to move, to say NO without reason and explanation.
I freeze. I see my little girl self stuck and absorbing dynamics that will instruct her that her needs and emotions are second to those around her, that her needs and emotions are abnormal, that to keep the peace she will need to swallow her truth and adjust. She will be silenced effectively, and now I do my own self-silencing.
“You are…” I clutch the steering wheel as the friend who has known me, has known that little girl, pauses to carefully deliver a truth that I will feel instantly, “filtered.”
Filtered. Self-correcting. Tiptoe-balancing.
I have always known my unfiltered truth, and yet, I do not vocalize the aliveness of full truth when I am in debate, when I am in the cross-fires of conflict, when I am leading and my honesty actually could benefit the team.
“Being honest with someone,” my teammate tells me after an improv show, “is one of the kindest things you could do.”
And at first I need to be honest with myself.
I practice discerning my heart-truth with ease.
And the truth here is that my inner child trauma revolves around freezing up, and that a challenging and soul-growing way to become free is to SPEAK UP and move my truth from my all-knowing heart up and out in imperfect phrases that may be destined to help the listener in their evolvement, too.
I radically allow the feeling and direct attentiveness back into my body, back to the sensation of pain, a static and sputtering energy crackling in my heart space (my heart center is where the lodged trauma surfaces to be felt and freed).
I breathe into the charged reaction and there is a tear-cleansed epiphany.
I fiercely listen to the inner child’s fears, soothe by reinstating my authority to take care of her and speak up for her. In releasing the judgment and understanding the freeze response, there’s a gradual fluidity that rolls my shoulders back, lengthens my spine, and empowers me to proceed with presence, breath, honesty.
This is how I will heal, center, rise.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”
I agree with the DMV clerk. The new photo for my Texas ID is…flattering.
But alas, this ID fails to arrive in the mail, and I find myself on the nail-biting edge of my flight date to Kentucky for my best friend’s wedding without an ID.
“Can you fly without an ID?” I midnight rendezvous with Google.
(Yes, swiftly informs Google. There’s alternative documentation that can secure passage into the sky. Like a passport. Mine expired. Or a check with a current address. Double-checked, and no. A student ID? Almost a decade since undergrad, and yet I am tempted…that’s a good photo of me.)
I decide to once again brave the DMV. I am a lively people-person and feel more confident in making my case about the mysterious disappearance of the ID face-to-face than rather through the abyss of the phone.
Besides, I have the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu to keep me company.
So on a Monday morning, I guzzle my coffee, pop “The Book of Joy” and a folder with all the critically important and adulting information I need to prove my identity to the DMV and rocket there in the hopes of getting there prompt and early.
At 8:30am, I settle into a back corner seat in an already crowded lobby with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. I balance the floral folder on my lap and dive into the ending chapters on how to cultivate and practice compassion during the trials of life.
As I read, the lobby bustles and brims with nervous teenagers getting their licenses before school begins, with families cradling papers and babies, and other Lone Star wannabes like me who disappear into their phones or stare into space.
I glance up to the overhead screen as if I’m looking up to God to answer a prayer, and the prayer answered would be to see my ticket number appear. I’ll be green-lighted out of this chair and into a cubicle to converse and conclude about what I need to do to ensure that I am getting on my flight in a little less than a week. And then I can have lunch, and for lunch, what will I eat…?
My fast-forwarding escalates anxiety.
My ticket number stretches further and further away. My legs complain from sitting too long. The receptionist barks that if everyone does not take a seat then they will send people outside in the baking heat to wait on the sizzling sidewalk, on the boiling cement because its building code that forbids an overflow of people to block the hallway.
I slump into my chair and despair. I miserably think of leaving and just settle on driving to Kentucky for the wedding.
And then my seat partner interrupts and jokes: “Hey, you’ll be done with your book by the time it’s your turn to go.” The humor enlightens me to the wisdom that patiently rests at my fingertips.
What would the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu do if they were postponed in limbo at the DMV?
How can I integrate their spirited-life teachings into the current scene?
Yes, I can sit here and read and contemplate noble qualities of acceptance, gratitude, compassion, but the real invitation is to practice them, especially when life frustrates. This is the golden opportunity to stay present, to vigorously accept the loud reality so there’s the spaciousness to work with life in all its complexity.
And to befriend this moment - exactly as it is - means befriending myself exactly as I am. Compassionate attentiveness circles honeyed acknowledgement around each micro-irritation and scurrying worry. I feel the texture of those feelings and deepen into radical allowing.
I practice self-compassion to embrace the totality of my humanity. In fostering peace and offering tenderness to my fragilities, limits, shadowy aspects of my personality, I strengthen in a gentle understanding that helps me extend compassion to the people around me.
Compassion means to “suffer with,” and honestly experiencing my own irritation and fear provides a portal to empathizing with my fellow Monday morning DMVers. I am not alone in my impatience; this impatience at the DMV unites me with the strangers who – like me – are frequently checking the crawling appointment announcements on the screen.
And once I recognize that I belong to this sea of humanity in the lobby and see these human beings as reflections of me and that I am reflections of them, I feel a profound sense of ease.
I do wait for three hours. I do finish my book before my appointment time arrives. I do start talking with the people around me (we converse about skydiving for birthday schemes and what to do when our friends date people we may not like). We cheer each time a number is called to celebrate an inch won.
And finally my number pivots onto the screen and there’s a round of congrats for me as I bounce to desk number nine stationed by the DMV employee who took the “winner, winner, chicken dinner” ID photo of me. He looks puzzled as I take a seat. I nod “hello” and wish he was helping me, because first he’s a good photographer and this woman is no smiles.
I take a moment to breathe and check my fear so I can choose kindness to be my centering guide as I work with the DMV employee.
I spill my tale about the lost ID over her pristine desk. She remains unmoved by my tale and dutifully asks for my birth certificate. Eager to exhibit my adulting skills, I flip open the folder, and to my silent horror see a tidy stack of tax files blinking blandly up at me. In a brilliant flash I revisit my room and notice that two identical folders lounging side by side on my desk.
I picked up the wrong one.
I’ve sat three hours in the lobby with the wrong folder.
I resign to my fate and confess.
“I brought the wrong folder.”
“Again?” the winner-winner-chicken-dinner clerk exclaims.
“Yes, again.”
This is a bizarre repeat. Only last time, winner-winner-chicken-dinner kindly let me leave and come back without waiting in line.
I do not expect the same gesture of kindness from this woman, but she surprises me and simply continues on. Maybe she felt a pang of compassion for this mess of a millennial, or her coworker’s recognition of me proved to be adequate enough for official needs.
She snaps a rather frightful photo of me and reports that the previous ID went missing because I failed to file a change of address to the state. And the state does not forward mail. It shreds it. I pay the $11 fee to update my residence and depart with my knocked confidence.
On the car ride back to the bungalow, I rewind and replay the events of the day, and question the topsy-turvy difficulty in what is typically a straight forward task. Inner narratives hiss in cringing criticism. Well-worn put-downs patter after my steps back into the sanctuary that is my room, where the correct folder raises an eyebrow as I collapse into a pitiful seat.
I decide to be productive, to have a bit of busy work to nudge me out of wallowing and start organizing the folders. And in the shuffle of papers, at the bottom of the stack, there’s the police report. The police report for the incident that occurred at the first address – the address that had accidentally remained with the state, the address where the initial ID had been sent, the address finally erased after two years of not living there.
And suddenly, I realize why establishing Texas residency, of officially owning a Texas ID had been a postponed and tedious procedure for me. This is a side-effect of trauma. A trauma that electric shocked me out of my body, that made me go to impractical commuting lengths to avoid a certain area of town, that coated caution into the foundational base of my relationship with the city.
I trace the hesitancy to commit to Austin to the trauma. I was petrified, and of course, unsure if I was going to stay, so I didn’t visit the DMV until it became an issue of legality.
I feel spontaneous and vast waves of compassion for the self who was terrified, and resourceful and brave. I feel compassion for the part of myself still struggling and not quite ready to admit how that incident impacted her life. And for right now, that’s ok. Compassion to cradle and cultivate the courage to call forth the hurts into the light when the timing feels supportive and steady in healing.
And this instant heartbeat practice of compassion ushers in streams of gratitude for the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, the exemplary leaders ignited in messages for justice and joy, forgiveness and liberation, peace and presence.
This is the power of a great book dissolving its beyond-word-wisdom into my story, and the story of my time in Austin will not be summed up by a police report at a former address, which is now not even on file, but by all the summer stops I make at the library, and the people in the DMV who mirror my own journey in navigating the Lone Star state. And as long as I have a library card and practice strengthening my compassionate response, such as refraining from critiquing the photo on my new ID and opting for thankfulness and relief so I can now fly to Kentucky in ease, then I trust that I’ll be alright, alright, alright for this Austin city ride.