How I see my life is a choice.
Negative: I have always felt out of control, blown about by winds, forced into decisions, uncomfortable in my feelings and the demands of the toxic world until I have hidden away, and I have no idea what to do now.
Positive: I have always done my best to advance my own interests, and acted in love courage and hope as best I may. I have retreated in order to heal, and now I have greater self-knowledge than ever before I may seek out what I want in my heart, and take steps to achieve it. I have always been surrounded by love and beauty.
I trained as a lawyer: I could put arguments for both, but one is from a place of fear and resistance, the other from love and acceptance. I feel the second is more accurate, as well as more useful, more able to encourage me. I face this choice of negativity or positivity.
Sometimes I become negative. After the job interview and the Positively Trans workshop digging up my past, I got a little down, and I could not see something particularly positive in my life, it was obscured by something apparently negative. So I acted in fear, and did less well than I would have done, acting in love.
I hope to notice when I am negative, and talk myself out of it. It behoves me to seek the positive.
As I looked into Liz’s eye, I could see the sky reflected in her iris, and her eyelashes- yes, they are definitely eyelashes- reflected shadow in this patch of light. Everything is beautiful.
I have had repeated calls for a Mr Hutchinson from a company, and cannot persuade them that he does not live here or not to phone. So:
Mr Hutchinson?
-Yes?
-I’m phoning about the Government’s Solar Scheme. Would you answer a few questions?
-Certainly.
Are you the homeowner?
-Yes.
What kind of house do you live in, sir?
-A castle with a moat.
How do you heat your castle, sir?
-Geothermal.
And is the castle listed in a conservation area?
-No, we only put it up last year.
I think I’ll end the call now, sir.
Click.
A moat? Well, it had been raining a lot that day.
Kathryn came to Meeting the second time when I chose to read Advices and Queries 27, my favourite:
Live adventurously. When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts in the service of God and the community? Let your life speak. When decisions have to be made, are you ready to join with others in seeking clearness, asking for God’s guidance and offering counsel to one another?
She liked it, and the joyous, dramatic way I read it. We talked deeply, and my status as a recluse is relevant to her life, as she faces momentous choices. I don’t want anything from her: I mean, it would be nice if she became wildly enthusiastic and in twenty years was clerk and elder, but only if that is right for her. I thought of it as a synchronicity, a series of delightful accidents leading to that encounter, but this does not need to have been God’s Plan: accidents will do.
The ground bass of my emotion is sadness at lost opportunity and missed experience, my sense of my wasted life- better than anger and resentment, perhaps- and perplexity: always, what shall I do now? Perhaps Nothing, as a positive choice. Meditate, contemplate, relax my chronic stress. If I could change that to appreciation, for
this is all there is, and it is beautiful…