I was talking to a friend on my commute home yesterday and we were laughing and missing our friend Peter who used to level us with amazing one liners. Everyone would be chatting and saying shit and then he would come out with these questions that would just cause the conversation to stop...
He moved back to the East Coast and we both miss him. Such a fine man and wonderful soul. I know he is still here in spirit and loving his new life back East, but my friend and I both miss him and his one liners...
My all time favorite one is “What if nothing is wrong?” Why does this question, every single time it is asked, instill panic in me? I mean of course I do not WANT anything to be wrong, and yet, it makes me a little nuts to think that everything actually might be alright!
What is up with that?
I love this question because it really addresses something going on in my life and head that without the question tends to go unnoticed. This idea and pervasive feeling that something is always wrong and there is something to be done about it. I think I have gotten better about allowing things to just be wrong and move on. I have gotten better also at accepting the wrongness that comes in life and not getting too worked up about it. But this crazy, insane idea that perhaps, nothing is actually wrong unnerves me.
This simply cannot be true!
There is ALWAYS SOMETHING WRONG!
Or is there?
Right now in my life, I am sitting in the dark in my cozy bed, cat snoozing on my lap, drinking coffee, pouring out the contents of my heart and head onto a blog that people actually read. My bills are paid, there is food in the fridge. My children are safely sleeping in their beds. I am sober and remember (well mostly remember) yesterday and the day before. I am in good health as far as I know as are most of the people I know and love. My job is going well and I feel appreciated for my efforts. I have friends and loved ones that care about me...
And so my life is good. Set. Leveled out. Yet, I still find it almost impossible to write the words “nothing is wrong...” Why???
Because for me, this idea that nothing is wrong, seems to conjure up another idea that dogs the “nothing wrong” phrase and that is “don’t say it, do not say it out loud, if you do, something will immediately go wrong...”
And that is probably the most true thing. Something is going to be wrong momentarily but not because I dare to throw down the “nothings currently wrong” gauntlet...but instead because it is life and things are always going to go wrong, then right, then wrong. Always a constant shifting and moving and changing of the moments and hours of our lives.
If I really pull back and look at this, I can see that the only thing that is ever really going to go wrong is death. That is kinda the ultimate wrong. And even saying that, I know that it is really inevitable more than wrong. While I may not like the timing, everyone and everything has its time to go.
I think that thinking about nothing being wrong unnerves me so much because it really underlines my addiction to drama. Something always has to be going on for me to have anything interesting to talk about...and that is how my conversation with my friend went...she asked what was going on in my life and I really had nothing to report. No major lows, no amazing highs. Just a good decent life that is unfolding every day, for days in a row. There are really not a lot of big deals even though I tend to think so at times. There is just this amazing, somewhat boring life going on.
As we hung up, I realized that I could have mentioned that while I was walking in the mountains the other day, I saw an eagle and heard the whooping of a pack of coyotes. That the clouds were so amazing yesterday that they felt almost surreal. That when I was sitting in meditation the other morning that tears began to roll down my cheeks for no reason whatsoever. That one of the best parts of every one of my days is when I sit down to write, coffee cradled at my side and my cat joins me for her morning purring sleep underneath my arm while it taps out whatever flows from my brain today.
Why did I not share these things? She is a person who would understand all of the above and be interested in knowing more about any of it. But I didn’t mention them. I kept them mine. I didn’t share. And, at least in part, I didn’t share because these are not the things I share. I talk about the outside stuff: the job, the house, the kids, the guy (or in my case the not-guy). Those are the things that I talk about not because they are really so important but because I have subscribed to the idea and notion that they are what we are meant to discuss with each other. They are safe. They allow us to continue our discussion of what is wrong and what is right in us and our worlds.
After I hung up with her, I walked onto my porch and she had left me homemade lemon bars from the lemons she gathered from my tree. There they sat on my front porch, effort evinced from a friend who loves me.
So today I will make the bold and daring proclamation that nothing is wrong today. Everything is right with me and the world and all of you. And better than anything I have homemade lemon bars from my sister on the path where nothing is actually wrong...Cheers!
