Ever wonder what life would be like if you had or hadn’t done that one thing? My class trip to Spain in 1995 is one of those experiences for me. In recent months, I wake up most days wondering “who am I going to be today”?! Although I’m sure there are other examples, like becoming a mother, my trip to Spain was the most profound experience of my own rebirth that I can recall. Unlike becoming a mother, the swift transformation I allowed myself during that trip was completely unexpected, at least consciously unexpected. Similar to the transformation of becoming someone’s Mama, it touched every aspect of my Being – no part of me was the same after. So far from home, with only acquaintance-type friends around me, I allowed the ties to my former self to be completely released. I became the person I always wanted to be and it was so much fun!!!
My former self, the one so diminished by fear, was dying to
transform! I had no idea this early graduation gift would be the catalyst to
becoming who I truly was at that time. My true self had been creeping
up intermittently through acts of teenage rebellion in the months leading up to
our big journey, but those two weeks touring that foreign land, from its high-desert
plains down to the coast and into the sea, offered me the gift of a lifetime. It offered me myself.
I ripped open that shiny, sparkly gift of myself with such excitement and enthusiasm, I couldn’t help but play with the new toy inside immediately! I “played” by speaking to people with confidence and interest, making eye contact with everyone who passed by. I took in my foreign surroundings with such wonder – everything was amazing and beautiful and awe-inspiring. Even seemingly mundane things like the pattern of the bricks of the walking plazas gave me a sense of wonderment. Through spontaneous conversations with benevolent strangers, a few of my trip-mates and I learned to salsa dance at a beachside bar. Two of the benevolent strangers enjoying some Mediterranean beach time with their motley crew happened to be professional salsa dancers!
An ugly duckling a few rounds in this lifetime, including my entire 16 years leading up to this trip, I avoided the opposite sex as much as possible, just as they avoided me. I took my coke-bottle glasses off whenever I could, and with this newfound confidence, I delighted in beautiful grown men flirting with me, and me them! As you can imagine, my confidence grew exponentially. I spoke with people from all over the world, and each one seemed to meet me with as much
interest as enthusiasm for me as I had for them. I literally had the time of my life!
My clumsy attempts to speak their native Spanish language
were warmly welcomed. They helped me understand them and vice-versa. I never
felt judged, only embraced and accepted in this friendly, beautiful
place among so many beautiful people! Spain, especially its capital, Madrid,
felt so familiar to me…I truly felt at home. I gladly volunteered to
take the worst bunk with my roommates, I rose the earliest to be out of their
bleary-eyed ways in the morning – nothing could dim my experience in this
Spanish paradise. I ventured across an ocean as a teenage nobody, afraid of the
world, and returned two weeks later with myself, full of confidence, enthusiasm, and a zest for life that didn’t exist within me before I left. Unbelievable!
And now here I am today, having just journeyed through the
darkest parts of myself to experience yet another rebirth, and I can’t help but
feel a tinge of sadness that this inward journey was so heavy compared to my
rebirth in Spain. But what if I hadn’t? What if I had let all that fear and
resistance keep me from this new understanding of who I truly am, how I best
work, and what I want to put my time and energy into? What if I had never been
to Spain?
The truth is my soul wouldn’t let me stay stuck. I came here
with an unremembered agenda of experience and feeling I could only have during
this lifetime - right here, right now. I have so much sparkle and fun ahead of
me, it was time I released all that baggage keeping me from myself, keeping me from
realizing my dreams. Spain showed me who I wanted to be, and my Dark Night of the Soul Journey 2021 showed me who I no longer was. And now I get to learn how to be who I am today, and it feels pretty damned good!
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