Do You Know the Way to…..

I love being the person that people know they can call, and I will try to help.

I know it plays into my co-dependence, but it also helps my healing journey. As I have been moving out of the depths of believing I am in charge of the universe, my new practice has been to attempt to wait until asked. That was the part I was missing. I thought every floundering soul was my responsibility.

And are they floundering? Perhaps they are simply living their life and getting about their journey and to me it appears to be more difficult, circuitous, lonely, or wrong. Stated a different way, it Is I who am wrong in my analysis of their life.

I liken it to a game of Simon Says. It is a great game for kids so that we can learn listening skills and patience and direction, but perhaps it is a lifelong game we should all engage in throughout our earthly existence.

Listening.

The world abounds with quotes that point out most of us are not truly listening but waiting to reply. As though we are on the starter blocks of a race and are aching to be the first to jump and get to the finish line. Wanting desperately to get our point across rather than take the time to enter the speaker’s world and experience their point of view. Were there a show of hands for that one, mine would be the first one up.

So, waiting to be asked is one way in which I remove myself from the anxiety and tension of the starter’s blocks. Rather than anticipating someone’s needs, I wait for them to tell me they need help. I can still offer information or direction but then I leave the conversation rather than micro-managing it through to its outcome which so often does not match my pictures nor should it. In conversation I am baby stepping toward longer silences and allowing more space for information to flow from others to me, rather than hurling myself into the stream, building a dam and attempting to hold back their hurt/struggle/pain. Because it is only my perception of that, not the reality.

That brings me back to the first sentence, the grace of noticing that without my intervention, I am the person a lot of people call when they need help. The help can be directions (literally as it was this morning), information, laughter, listening, assistance working through dilemmas, referrals or just someone on the end of the phone when you need to talk. It is mine to give and it allows for more generosity if I simply wait to be asked.