Deep, deep in the Ocean

Some folks don’t like boat rides of any kind. They fear boats and boat rides. No one gave them toy boats to play with as children. No one told them of adventures on the seas. What they heard of boats were facts from history in school. What they remember are statistics of tragedies.

Some folks take boats for fun. They could never be serious about boating. They never take care with any boat they might use or borrow.

Some people enjoy cruise ships. Big hotels on water. They feel like they’re on land when they’re not. Similar people like looking through the glass bottom of a glass-bottom boat. They can see underwater, when they’re not.

Many people are content to stay on top of the water. They see only the surface, light reflecting, waves pounding the shore. Some can see just below the surface. Their eyes follow the light a few feet below. Some can snorkel deep enough to see the colors and colorful fish that live in the water below the boat.

Few want to go deep, deep down, deep in the ocean to know their own soul.

--me strauss Letting me be

Instinct

From before we are born, we have knowledge. We have the learning of our species. It comes from centuries packed into us in the form of instinct.

As infants our fingers wrap around things.

We know how to make noise when we need attention. We are drawn to mate to preserve our species. We to fight or flee when we fear danger. Our instinct overrides our reasoning.

We know before we say our names to cry when we feel pain, when we need.

We know things.

How do we know so many things . . . and still not know ourselves?

−me strauss Letting me be

More than What Happens

Why did I hold onto my pain for so long? For decades I carried it with me. I look back now and every example seems so small. Why did I make those things so important? I didn’t wish harm to anyone. Did I feel I was nothing without them?

The bad things, the hurtful things were like banners and badges. In some ways, my responses to bad events were accomplishments. I thought of them as character-building experiences. I didn’t want revenge or glory, but I think I wanted someone to see . . . to see what? . . . to see what hurt me to help me understand. Yet somehow those events began to define me. The accomplishments and the events became the same things. Then they became part of me.

I still think that bad events can build character. I know that mine changed me, and now finally for the better. Then I thought living through the pain was the learning they had to offer. Now I know the real learning was when I could say I laid down the pain.

I blessed it, buried it, and walked away from it.

I still remember, but no longer define myself by it.

I am more than what happens to me.

−me strauss Letting me be

My Place in the Sun

On the first day of school, in a seminar, at someone’s house, peoples say, “Come on in. Find a place. Make yourself comfortable.” They seem to think that’s easy. They seem to think that any place is the same, just the same as any other.

That might be how it works for them. It’s not how it works for me.

When I find a place to be comfortable, I become part of it. It becomes part of me.

I’m an introvert, extrovert, introvert, who likes to be in a cave, on the stage, in a cave. Please don’t look at me or make me invisible. Don’t leave out or put me on a pedestal. I’m really shy, but I never have stage fright. The difference in all of these is holding the microphone.

All my life I’ve had a feeling that I would do something important, something that only I would make happen. Maybe that’s why I’m such a weird combination of contradictions or maybe I’m so normal that I can’t see it. It seems awfully normal towalk around feeling different, contradictory, and confused.

Isn’t everyone looking for their place in the sun?
I think that mine is hiding somewhere deep inside of me.

−me strauss Letting me be

Take My Trust

Here I am. I am writing while the sun’s still sleeping. I have a promise I must keep, a hope I can’t shake loose. One word’s been following me. It’s been around for days, stalking my thoughts.

I told myself I would write it.

I hear the muffled sounds of invisible cars, passing by in the darkness outside, Look-alike people drive look-alike machines that they sit inside. I sit alone, recalling empty words covering fearful or worse, nonexistent, feelings.

Listening to the genuinely empty sounds around me, I hear the echoes of unanswered calls, of friends who let friends down, of dates and meetings forgotten, of promises made without care.

I think, wandering my cares and fears, wondering if this is how others think of theirs. I'm trying to sort out the whys, hoping to find some sort of reason. I realize the risk and still the question remains to haunt me.

Where did the trust go?

Every voice around me seems bundled, tied, and locked inside a safety box. Each safety box is wrapped to look as if it’s not, as if it's invisible. The fear, the hiding is so sad. It hurts. It’s not right. It’s not good. Trust or fear weaves through every act. It filters their words, coloring the meanings. Words have wide eyes that look with yearning, spaces between them stare with hope. They beg, Can you see me? Can I trust you? Do you trust me? Will we trust each other?

Everywhere I go I see it. Trust is whispering its name. It interrupts our conversations. You said trust yesterday. Two more said it this week.

Where did the trust go? We had it. We shared it freely, boldly without fear, without secrets. Were we really that brave? Were we that naïve?

We were trustworthy.

We are trustworthy still. We can trust that we know just as we did then.

Take my trust. Take all you need.

I have plenty because without it, I can’t breathe.

−me strauss Letting me be

Asking for Help

I suppose asking for help doesn’t come easily for anyone. Surely that must true. We all must think of ourselves as able to find our way on our own, helping others . . . not the ones needing help.

Need seems to place us lower than we might want to be. It takes us back to that dependency where we were, reaching up with a hand, reaching for someone stronger, smarter, more powerful, more adept than we are.

That’s the thought, the learning that I’m unraveling now. It doesn’t have to feel that way.

Reaching out for help doesn’t mean reaching up for strength.

Am I strong enough in my sense of self to believe that?
Can I ask for help and feel I’m not becoming dependent?

Of course I can. I can stand by your side and lean on you, knowing you’ll lean on me when you feel the same need.

You and I do that without thinking.

Asking for help is faith and trust. It’s something to live up to both ways. It makes us stronger, gentler, gives us grace.

I am learning how to become a human being. It takes help.

All I had to do was ask.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Edge of the Sea

It didn’t take long to get there, to the water’s edge. Truth is I was there before I grabbed my keys to go. I was a state of mind that I needed to find the visual for. That's why I left the safety of my small space to wander out. Still as soon as I put my jacket on, stuck my wallet in my jeans, and reached for my cell phone, I was already gone.

Time in a car means nothing when you’re on your own, if where you’re going is where you need to be. I let the music, some complicated fugue, play me along. I let the blue sky keep watch over my way. My thoughts kept the picture of space and held my purpose firmly, unwaveringly ahead, just ahead of me. I was the child on a date with her life. No thoughts needed thinking. Not really, no pains. Only the call of the edge of the sea.

Perfect afternoon caught me up breathless. It was almost more than I could bear. How the world is filled with metaphors, murals, moving meaning of my life. There, I thought, there. See that calm iridescent, ice blue of my son’s baby eyes on the sand of his young man’s hair. See the confusion of water that runs up the side.

And I walk between both -- the beautiful calm sand and the chaos of the sea -- I walk through my life on the edge between calm and confusion, under a blue and ever changing sky.

Seeing nature’s contradiction makes it easier to bear the same edge that churns up inside.

I love the space under the sky that gives perspective to the crashing, where the calm ice blue meets the confusion at the edge of the sea.

−me strauss Letting me be

25 Words: A Pattern

25 words
It's a pattern weaving through all of my life.
I am kinder, more generous, and I like myself better when I am helping someone else.

I Know I Am

Bloom’s taxonomy: know, understand, apply, analyze, synthesize, evaluate.

I know I’m here, or do I know that? Do I need other people to verify that I exist? Am I like the tree in the forest, that my sounds don’t matter if no one hears me? Many people feel that way. I once was one of them. I am no longer.

I see their need to know they’re here. I see them clutching tightly to unimportant things. They worry over life’s details − milk rings on drinking glasses or crumbs on tables. They fret on a word said that’s not the one they might have said. When a mistake occurs, their first words are, “I didn’t cause it.” How hard it must be to find a place to stand by clinging to such negative things.

I know how to be invisible. I know that it can feel a struggle not to be.

But how do I know that I am?

I know because things I do change things. When I plant flower, it grows or withers. When I smile, people smile back. When I let go, I breathe easier, and others sense that. They relax. I take down walls or build fences. I wipe a tear from a child’s face. I give a hug to a grandmother. I give up a seat on a bus.

I know I am because my very being changes things in the world.

−me strauss Letting me be