This is a question poet/author Mark Nepo asks in his “The Book of Awakening,” entry for September 5th, page 303.
The question is an invitation to share your story as a way to heal, mend the heart, and come to terms with the past.
Telling your story can save and liberate you. Write down your story or tell it, over and over again.
My only word of caution is don’t become your story or overindulge. That’s always a fine line to walk, one we might need to cross to fully understand and come to terms with our story.
I have to be honest with you. I don’t care if you like me or not. I don’t.
So here it goes.
I wish for all of your dreams, aspirations, and hopes to come to fruition in this lifetime. I wish for you to be happy. I wish for you to be prosperous. I wish for you to have health.
I wish for you to be happy. I wish for you to be free from suffering. I am sending you love, and best of wishes for this day.
Happy Friday!
Have a magical, wonderful day today and every day.
The introvert, my penultimate meeting, and the extrovert, my most recent.
The former, a self-proclaimed introvert, did not mind aspects of the pandemic. Acknowledging her good fortune – health, economic stability, and other blessings in her life – the circumstances of social distancing and the limited social engagements provided opportunities for personal healing, self-discovery, relaxation, discovery, and a much welcomed slower pace of life.
On the other hand, the self-proclaimed introvert, also aware and grateful of her good fortunes, had a different experience. The pandemic provided a set of unwelcome challenges and tribulations.
Two experiences through different lenses.
The experience of meeting these two incredibly warm and grounded, yet different individuals highlighted and reminded me of the importance of connecting with others.
No matter how we experience, sense, or interact with the world, making connections at the individual or at levels that fit our comfort level nourishes the spirit.
Both of them ventured to meet and connect with me for the first time. Our respective interactions provided a point of accentuation – a break in our daily lives inviting us into a journey of laughter, conversation, and discovery.
Hearing their divergent experiences opened my own lens of understanding, compassion, and sympathy/empathy.
It is easy to isolate, get caught in our daily routines, or stay in our lane without venturing to talk to strangers or meet up with different communities from ours. The challenge is to get over those hurdles. Jumping over those obstacles is a personal journey but I bet the introvert and the extrovert in you will appreciate the leap.
This post showed up on my Facebook Memories recently, conjuring up bittersweet memories of what seems like a lifetime ago.
A sentiment that comes across is the immense gratitude for all the people that supported and carried us through those difficult times.
So many to fully and properly acknowledge, from the team of doctors, nurses and hospice workers who showed compassion and care, friends who accompanied my wife to her chemo sessions, the folks that started meal trains and fundraising campaigns, to those that were there to console me when my wife passed.
In between, there are so many people that helped my family and myself get through. I will forever be thankful to the kindness, love, generosity and love we were grateful to receive.
Today, after a year and a half or more, I had the pleasure of catching up with one of my first CWJ coffee mates.
In addition to being an amazing Zumba dancer with the kind of energy that brightness up a room, she is a trailblazer, a wonderful soulful friend, and a gem among stones.
In her own words, check out her video on how at 38 she joined the Air Force, confronting fears and doing something not a lot of people would think of doing in their late 30s.
What fears do you feel you need to conquer? Do you have a dream, yet to chase?
The 100th meet-up! I have arrived at a point of accentuation, a milestone in a journey leading to connections, both old and new in many senses of the word.
I could not have planned for a better companion for this benchmark in my ultimate goal of 150 coffee meet-ups with different people. We caught up for about an hr, talking about our daily lives, kids, and nothing in particular. I typically don’t go into details about my coffee mates but, making the exception here, let me introduce you.
She is a Vassar graduate, an MBA from the University of Michigan, Goldman Sachs alumna, author, consultant, board member of countless organizations, international speaker, the first woman to serve as CEO of the Dominican Republic Stock Exchange (BVRD), making her the first woman to hold such a position in Latin America.
If that was not impressive enough, I am honored and privileged to announce that my coffee mate for my 100th CWJ is at 52 years old getting ready to embark on obtaining a master’s in public administrations from Harvard University. Not only has she gotten accepted into the program, but she has also received the prestigious Presidential Kennedy Fellowship awarded on merit.
But most of all she is my sister-in-law. Our connection is that of shared memories, blood connection between her children and my son, and our deep love for her sister, my wife. We are bounded by an invisible thread of kinship. It is that human connection that transcends the accomplishments, accolades, successes, and all those identifiers/qualifiers/modifiers we carry around as our identities.
On paper, I find we are sometimes intimidated to talk or even approach a person we see with an impressive resume or a life filled with accomplishments after accomplishments, placing them on a pedestal and forgetting that we are all humans with a capacity to bond with each other, even for brief moments. The opposite can also be true where we are the ones thinking we are above a certain level to converse or bond with a person not within our social strata.
We all share that magical thread, the thread of love, suffering, experiencing loss, and all the emotions that makes us human. It is that space where I find beauty in sharing a moment and a conversation. Hope you too find that beautiful space as you step out of yourself and connect with others.
A whole month plus since I had Coffee with John # 101.
Since then, I have gone to Florida and Virginia, visited Asheville thrice and other places in between here and there. I have celebrated another year around the sun, a double celebration as my son and I share birthdays.
To say the least, it has been a busy month of adventures, gatherings, and all sorts of celebrations and commemorations.
What wonderful reasons to postpone an entry that I had written in my mind the minute my conversation with my mate for my Coffee with John #101 had ended. Wonderful in that they are all little gifts life has afforded me. The gifts of traveling, sharing with loved ones, and rejoicing in magical, special moments.
Special moments like the last meeting in my journey of reaching 150 coffees. Meeting 101, a gift of its own, came via coffee mate #98 — the sister of a dear friend from my yoga community who I had not met before our coffee.
What stroke me from this last meeting was the beauty of granting your essence to another; that pure, wondrous gift you bring to this world.
Here a self-proclaimed introvert shared an hour of her time with a stranger. Among conversation about this and that, she broke out a beautiful ukulele her mother had given her as a gift following a family tradition to mend broken hearts. She played her song and sang a melodious tune with a soft, rich voice. As the hour came to an end, we said farewell and ended the conversation. Those transient are the little gifts life grants and are only possible when we open to receiving and giving. One of the most valuable commodities you possess is the light you bring. Play your song and share it.
And here we arrive back at that original magical seven, a number that has inspired and led to my fury of wonderful, surprising last rounds of coffee meetups.
Ain’t it funny how in life, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart, we end up returning, willingly or unexpectedly, to that original place/spot that we had sworn to all the gods that never again – never again to date, fall in love, trust another with our emotions, or be such a foolish romantic.
No other area in our lives do we have so little control over (okay, perhaps hyperbole but entertain me here). Once our brains are on that high of estrogen, testosterone, endorphin, dopamine, oxytocin, norepinephrine, we are hopeless. Our sense of logic, constrain and whatever else we think makes us rational beings, all go out the window. Our reaction at times is to run away from it. Other times, we rush into it fully invested with no reins.
Sure, I have encountered many that have vowed not to date, completely giving up hope on finding a partner. And not a temporary pause to take care of themselves or other pending and pressing matters, but altogether. I applaud their conviction. Still, when the time strikes, it is magical to fall under that reckless spell of love and attraction, putting our hearts and ourselves at risk of heartbreak.
We might not all agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous words, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” but the wonder of love is indeed magical and worth the pursuit of that beautiful quest, even if fleeting and the risks high. I say rush into and collide, whole-heartedly.
In addition to an enrienching conversation and many takeaways, my coffee mate for this round reminded me of the beauty of finding ourselves back at that gripping equation of love at different stages of our lives time, and time again with many personal adventures and tribulations in between.
I never thought getting a no/rejection letter could feel so damn good.
After going back and forth for a few weeks with the creator and editor of the HuffPost Personal, he wrote, “…let me say what a truly, truly beautiful piece you’ve written…Ultimately, the piece isn’t a fit for us. It would have to be chopped down. It would lose a lot of the love and luster and care that’s there. And I don’t want to do that. I hate having to say no (I say no 99% of the time due to my budget and limited space) but I especially hate saying it when I actually love the piece…I do hope that you’ll share this with your friends and family (and maybe you can find another home for it somewhere else too).“
Receiving and reading those words made me feel relieved, heard, and acknowledged.
I had originally submitted a different piece from what I ended up writing at the end. At that time, without expecting a reply, I got an email from an actual person telling me that he would get back to me soon. (That in itself was thrilling).
After a few exchanges and connecting on a personal level, he gave me candid notes and the option to resubmit.
I am so glad and grateful for the experience of having to rewrite that original essay. The process, while emotional, I found it cathartic and liberating. It took me about two, plus weeks to finish it as revisiting memories of my wife brought tears to my eyes. But, I don’t think I would have completed the piece if it wasn’t for that initial spark the HuffPost editor ignited.
Getting published by the HuffPost would have been incredible (and a middle finger to the few people in my life that at some point discouraged or disparaged my writing abilities) but how cool is it that I ended up having Coffee with John (CWJ) with the editor, making him part of the magical seven to reach the 100 milestone to ultimately reach my 150 goal.
The conversation I had with him was priceless. He is the type of person you want to be friends with from the get-go. After some technical issues on my end with Zoom, our time went by quickly, only scratching the surface on a variety of topics. A few things stood out for me from this meetup.
One, here is a grounded individual who loves his job and gives a lot of care with the trust he is giving by hundreds of people hoping to share their personal stories with the world. The other thing that stood out for me comes down to the power of telling or putting down your story in writing. As my coffee mate and many others have noted, writing down your story can save and give your life a new direction.
If you have a story to tell, I encourage you to share it with others or write it down to exorcise those feelings, emotions, secrets out of your system. If you are compelled to submit your story to the HuffPost, please, do it. You never know where the journey might take you.
As for my essay, now more than ever, I am determined to find a home for it and see where that Odyssey leads me.
Facts are indisputable. Yet, we all have our versions of the past, seen through our experiences, and informed by our own biases and internal and external forces – age, race, gender, social-economic status, etc.
The cool, beautiful girl you so admired back in middle school you come to find out was riddled with insecurities and thought of herself as the ugly duckling. The bully, who went around terrorizing all, turns out was in turmoil over his sexuality.
A place you hold dear to your heart for the fond memories it conjures up can elicit opposite feelings for others. For you, it can be the place you came of age, for others: a tragic spot filled with nightmares.
We don’t always get to revisit or learn how others experienced shared histories, not that doing so would change our memories or reconcile our past. Still, glancing into the history of others can help us gain new revelations and be more understandable, forgiving, and generous to ourselves and others.
This last round of Coffee with John reminded me of the importance of stepping out of our shoes to look around and see who might benefit from us acknowledging their story and where they are standing in comparison to us. We all need to pause and truly see others beyond our lens, needs, and feelings.
Coffee With John 