Tell The Other Story

Posted on March 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

740. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Etched in the mirror behind the counter of the Cherry Street coffeehouse is this thought: Love and Kindness work everyday. On the wall opposite the mirror, so that it reflects in the mirror, is a large bright red heart. Heart reflects heart. Kindness begets kindness.

Last week, during a difficult moment, Megan-the-brilliant told me that she silently repeated the Buddhist loving kindness meditation, “May I dwell in my heart,….” After the moment passed she told me the meditation helped. Instead of defensiveness, she chose to breathe in and reflect loving kindness. Love and kindness are intentional acts, especially in difficult circumstances.

It seems so simple. What we put out reflects back onto us. Today as I rode on the light rail to my studio I imagined the riders as mirrors of each other. I saw small acts of kindness: a woman gave up her seat for an elder, a young man helped an older woman with her luggage, a security officer made sure a tourist knew how to get a ticket and pointed her in the right direction; it went on and on.

I wonder how much of the kindness we see? It happens all around us but do we see it? I hear about the other stuff, the complaints, the obstacles, the abuse; I see it, too but it is less frequent than the generosities. I hear less often about the small acts of kindness but I see them everywhere I look. They are literally everywhere. I wonder what world we might create if we told the story of our acts of kindness as often and with as much gusto as we tell the other tales?

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Love Until It Hurts

Posted on February 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

LOVE UNTIL IT HURTS
708. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” Mother Teresa

Today is St. Valentine’s Day – though you will read this the day after.

When I was a kid in school we decorated sacks and wrote valentines for everyone in our class. By the end of the school day we had a sack full of I-love-you notes and a belly full of cupcakes and sweetheart candies. Some of the valentines in the sack mattered more than others. For instance, in 1st grade I was in love with Nancy and when she put a valentine in my sack I was elated. And then I was scared: was she as excited by my valentine as I was by hers? I delight in Valentines Day because it is (or can be) a festival of the irrational; a day acknowledging the transcendent power of love. All day I thought of people I love dearly and although I only told a few, I basked in how many people on this planet I hold dear in my heart and wanted to send sweetheart candies printed with the phrase, “Be Mine!” Valentine’s Day is a celebration of things that cannot be measured.

All day I’ve smiled at the men passing me on the street carrying large bunches of flowers or strings of heart balloons. These rough tattooed or polished business suited men basically carrying a large sign signifying, “I AM IN LOVE,” looked sheepish and vulnerable to step beyond their macho and publically share their tender heart. It was refreshing to wander through the financial district surrounded by normally steely-faced men in ties blushing in excitement and fear: would their Nancy return their affection? As I passed through the metal detector in the Federal Building a box of heart cookies was delivered to the security staff. The men and women in badges grinned and shared; they were thrilled.

The Odyssey is one of the great pieces of literature in the western world. It is the story of Odysseus trying to return home to his wife Penelope after the Trojan War. He tries for years to return home with the gods and elements working against him. He loses his ship and his crew. He survives monsters and Cyclops and witches. He is stranded and held hostage. He suffers terribly. He loves until he hurts and in his hurt he finds more and more love. This greatest of Greek epics is a story of the triumph of love.

Stories of great love are not stories of ease. Stories of great love are about reaching through fear, the irrational, the elements, stepping into the unknown and with the gods stacked against you, and yet you continue; still you persevere. Step into the hurt. Reach across the fear and take their hand in yours. Take a chance and say, “I love you so much that it hurts.”

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Receive

Posted on February 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

704. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

In the past several weeks I have traveled many places. I’ve spent some time in the house where I grew up. I walked the streets of my boyhood and revisited the sacred sites of my childhood. The houses in the neighborhood seem so small. I’ve had the opportunity to revisit memories, to stand in spots where life seemed to bring overwhelming experiences; these, like the houses, now seem so small. I’ve chuckled more than once at monsters that I used to tote and how, from this vantage point, they seem like stuffed animals, cuddly toys. That is the power of memory, our great capacity to re-member our lives with every visit to the past.

In my walk-about I am consciously pulling down the barriers. I am surrounded by people who love me and whom I love. I am astounded by a generosity of spirit that greets me everywhere I go. I am learning to receive and the curious thing about receiving is that you need do nothing but open or perhaps surrender. The only requirement to receive love is that you show up. Who knew!

During this period of wandering I’ve been working again with the Parcival story and thinking about the moment in the story when Parcival removes his armor. Armor protects but it also restricts. Armor is a great way to not be seen. In order to want to take off your armor you must first put down your sword; you must change your idea of the world and your place in it. Carrying a sword is a great way to keep love away. After dropping your sword, you must be lost for a while and break your rules. Parcival’s sword shatters and he weeps. He removes his armor and follows a hermit into the woods. He stops seeking, stops trying to prove, suspends the fight and starts living moment to moment. And, when he’s forgotten about roles and knights and proving, the Grail castle reappears. He steps inside unprotected and claims his inheritance. He becomes the Grail. Love finds him when he stops looking for love.

Sometimes we wear our past like armor. We hang onto injustice, we identify ourselves by the trauma, and we claim our limitations as if we were born to bear them. I’m learning that these are the barriers we erect against love. To drop the armor all that is required is to let go of the past and re-member. The love, like the Grail castle, is waiting for us. As the hermit says to Parcival when he turns and discovers the castle, “Boy, it’s been there all along.”

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Feel The Possibility

Posted on December 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

650. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am in the backseat of Lisa’s car. It is night and we are driving one of those amazing highways that knows no large city. This road is a ribbon connecting the occasional community, none with more than 10 stoplights. It’s been several miles since we passed through the last town and it will be many more miles until we see another light. My face is resting on the window because I cannot believe how many stars are visible when not obscured by the glow of a city. And I am counting my great good fortune because on this night there is a meteor shower. It looks as if stars get so excited that they have to flame and run. “There’s one!” Megan calls. “Where?” Lisa says, peering over the steering wheel. “You missed it.” I rest my face on the glass so in love with this moment and my two companions that I can barely breathe.

We pull off the road so we can gaze at the stars without worrying about driving. We stand on the edge of a fallow field, shivering in the cold winter air, necks craned to the sky. It is not lost on me that we are returning from Kansas where we attended a Launch for presenters; a workshop that, when we are old and rocking on the porch, we will look back and say, “That two days with Kevin Honeycutt changed the trajectory of my life.” And on the way home from a life changing experience called a Launch, the universe decided with great humor to coordinate with Kevin and gift us with a meteor shower. “This is what love is supposed to feel like,” I think to myself, linking arms with Megan who gasps, exclaims, “Oh My God!” and points to the latest sky streaker.

Shivering, I remember Holly from my coaching class having an epiphany, saying, “I feel possibilities. I make lists of them, all of the endless possibilities! They are visceral, like stars! It’s like, constantly discovering a new star, feeling the possibility – the gratitude extends to the possibility and the possibility extends to helping someone and the helping circles back to me! It’s a cycle. It’s an adventure and I feel it!”

“OH!” Lisa, Megan and I gasp and point at the same moment. “Did you see that one?” we chime in unison.

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Look To The Little Things

Posted on October 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

582. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Megan-the-Brilliant and I talked late one night about the little things in life; we both agreed that they are the most significant things, those little moments that we almost always miss. She told me of being stunned into silence by the yellow leaves falling in a perfect circle beneath a tree. No other tree in the park was shedding its leaves. This single tree was ringed by a brilliant yellow circle of it’s leaves and in the morning light, it was electric. The next morning, on our way to the airport, she took me to see it. I gave her an assignment: I asked her to go to the tree the following morning, take off her shoes, and walk in the circle of leaves. I am waiting for a full report.

Sometimes the small things surprise you: you discover the circle of leaves. Sometimes you create the small things: you drive to the circle in the early morning light, take off your shoes, and walk through the brilliant leaves. I am practicing moving though my life looking for the small surprises. It makes me move slower, to expect the surprises. I am never disappointed as each day, everywhere I look, I see the little miracles, the kindnesses, the generosities, the electric trees, the mesquite smell in the air.

I am also practicing creating the small memories. Last week I stepped into the river. I climbed a fallen eagle tree and peered into an abandoned nest. I threw bark in the water to make a splash. I ate slowly my chili and smelled a warm, freshly baked cinnamon roll. I splashed paint with a little blonde miracle. I sat before a fire late into the night, drank wine and talked of small things.

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Dance A Circle

Posted on October 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

578. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

We drove up Mount Lemmon to have a picnic and to scatter Margaret’s ashes. She loved the mountains of Tucson and there is no better leaping place for Margaret’s soul than the top of Mount Lemmon. We found a perfect spot, a view for miles, a place of utter beauty and inspiration. She would have clapped her hands together and said, “Perfect!”

Mary Ann made our picnic from the leftovers of Margaret’s celebration of life party the night before and we feasted and laughed. We told more stories. We waited for the right moment. Lora and her brother climbed down the rock face and discovered the place where they wanted to establish Margaret’s alter; it was an almost perfect circle of soil nested in this world of rock; it held a single hardy, sturdy tree. Her grandchildren built a simple altar: wild flowers, stones, crystals, roses, and a photograph of Margaret in her prime. We spoke words and read poems. And then, we took turns spreading some of her ashes. It was too solemn and Dante, the youngest of the grandchildren, somehow knew…. She took the sack of ashes and descended further down the rock face. We stood above and watched as she very slowly, at first very carefully, began to release Margaret with the wind. Dante’s gestures were large and soon took over; I do not think she noticed when her gesture became a dance of giving Margaret back: Dante danced Margaret. Margaret danced Dante. The circle of life peaked from behind the curtain for those few gorgeous moments. Time stood still.

Dante finish her dance. The curtain fell closed again. Ordinary time returned. We climbed back to our picnic spot with the simple inner quiet and satisfaction of completion. Margaret was free. Dante had showed us the circle. Mary Ann asked, “Does anyone want a brownie?” Life, once again, began to flow toward the ocean and with chocolate and friends and family we left the mountain transformed.

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Choose Love

Posted on September 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

559. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In a recent coaching forum call, Alan said, “Choose love. No need to ask how or fret about it. Just choose it.” We were doing an imagination exercise, working with taking radical steps. The possibility of choosing love without a qualifier was revolutionary for many people on the call. No need to modify or justify your choice. Just choose it. Choosing love, as it turned out, was a radical step.

To many people on the call, choosing love as the organizing principle, as the baseline for all other action seemed so far out of reach as to be impossible. Choosing love was an abstraction, like walking on the moon is an abstraction, something that is imaginable but certainly not doable.

What is love? Is it an achievement? Like a moon shot, does it take complex mathematics and the latest technology? Is it something we find? Is it something we manufacture? There are entire industries built upon the search for love and the inevitable disappointment. Hearts are opened and hearts are broken so the choice of love must always come with strings attached, right? The strings are certainly untenable. Is this love?

Think about the implications in the lyric, “Looking for love in all the wrong places….” Yikes! Love cannot be something you choose if you believe it is something you seek. To choose it, you must already have it. How can it be that we imagine ourselves separate and distant from love?

As Ana-the-Wise tells me, “Love is neutral.” Making bargains is not love; trading pieces of yourself in exchange for attention or affection is not love. If you are giving a part of yourself away, suppressing yourself, editing yourself you are engaged in something but it is definitely not love.

Here’s my theory: to choose love is to choose yourself. This choice will move you to the top of the list. It will require you to be seen, to embrace your greatness, to stop minimizing yourself, and most importantly to drop the illusion that anyone can fill you up or tell you how it is to be done. You must love yourself to choose love and that choice has no back door; to love yourself means you give up all escape fantasies and must own your power. Can you imagine it?

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Learn From Margaret

Posted on August 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

534. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Margaret died today. She had an epic and courageous journey through Alzheimer’s and just before dinner she closed her eyes and passed. I met her 10 years ago, 5 years into her disease long after she was capable of living on her own. She was in the phase where she put magazines in the toaster and if left to her own devices might wander off into the Tucson desert. Even so, she still had a wicked sense of humor and was filled with mischief and this was true long after she was in the advanced stages. I loved her immediately because, even in her ravaged state, she had more life than most people have in their prime. When I met her she winked at me and with her eyes filled with mirth she told me to “leave the babe (her daughter).” She was a remarkable flirt.

I learned that everyday of her life, at sunset, she stopped what she was doing, went outside and watched the sun go down; a ritual of gratitude and appreciation of life.

Now that she has passed into memory I will keep her life burning in my remembering and these are just a few:

In the Arizona Wildlife museum she vigorously rubbed her breastbone trying to make herself purpose-burp. She’d done it earlier and I’d howled with laughter. She got such a rise out of me that she spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get me to laugh again (I am an easy mark and her endless attempts were more precious than the initial burp. I laughed louder and louder at her misses – we created a lovely feedback loop).

Near the time when we could no longer take her out we cruised the streets of Tucson, Lora and Margaret in the front seat of our rental car singing; Margaret no longer had the lyrics but her commitment to sound was prodigious. Every time she saw a red car she’d stop her song and say, “Now, there’s a red car!”

I will always carry those few luscious gem moments when, as we watched her slowly slip farther and farther away, she would, just for a moment, came back, her eyes sparkling, and exclaim, “Really!” as if her simple joy of life called her from the depths because she simply could not contain her awe.

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The Crux Of The Matter

Posted on August 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

512. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In my head today I am having the most interesting conversation. The crux of the matter is this: could I love myself, truly love myself, if I did nothing for the rest of my life? What if I sat on a park bench tomorrow, gave up all pursuits, let go of all ideas of service or gain, swore off all forms of productivity; could I still love myself?

I am the son of good puritan Iowa farm stock. More than once in my life I have heard people speak of my father as a good man because he was a hard worker. Both of my grandfather’s were blue collar, hard working business owners that “did well” in the world. One was a milkman; he owned a dairy in Monticello, Iowa. The other had a business fixing sewing machines. They belonged to service clubs and sometimes attended church; we don’t talk about those things when we talk about how good they were; we talk about what they did and how hard they worked. We talk about the virtue of their toil.

This is no flippant question. I work with too many people that hate themselves because they are not doing what they want to do or they think they need to do more to be valuable. I am hard on myself if I do not achieve everything on my list each day- as if I didn’t do enough to earn my love.

What if loving myself had no requirements; what if loving myself had no conditions? What if loving myself had no connection to my doing or not doing? What if I did not have to earn it? What if loving myself was the beginning point, the first assumption, the prerequisite,… the structure of the land so that all of my behavior and my actions, like water, followed this path of least resistance?

I do not think I would do less work. I am certain I would work differently. How can I possibly be fulfilled if my center point is anything other than love?

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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Truly Powerful People (472)

Posted on June 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

472.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Nicest moment of the week:

I wrote: I love you.
She wrote: I love you more.
I wrote: Oh yeah, I love you more than more.
She wrote: Really, well I let you win so it just proves that I love you more than you can possibly love me. So there! I love you more.

I surrendered. I waved my white flag and let myself be loved more. It’s a nice competition to lose. I recommend throwing the game the next time you find yourself locked in a vicious “I love you” match. Bet on yourself and then lose mightily. All the empty space in your coffers will soon fill up with something much better than gold. This little spontaneous “I love you more” competition left me smiling. All day. Later, when someone cut me off in traffic I said, “Oh yeah! I love you more!”

Language matters. I tried my new “I love you more” game on for size for the rest of the day and you’ll not be surprised to hear that I had an excellent day. It is nice to tell the world that you love it more than more, regardless of what comes your way. The real magic is what loving more does for you on the inside. It’s alchemy: the world may send you lead but you have the capacity to turn it into gold.

Oh yeah! Well, I love you more.

Filed under: Love, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

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