Читать книгу How Did I Get Here?: Navigating the unexpected turns in love and life - Barbara Angelis De - Страница 20

That’s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they’ve been all along. —Madeleine L’Engle

It is nighttime. You are fast asleep in your bed. Your everyday reality still exists around you. The wind blows the branches of the trees so that they rustle outside your window. The cat makes her way from the living room to the kitchen for a 2:00 A.M. snack. The clock on the wall in your den ticks as it keeps track of the hours that pass. But you are completely unaware that any of this is going on. You are in another world, dreaming of other realities. You are riding a horse in a beautiful meadow, or looking for something you can’t remember on a familiar street, or having a delightful conversation with someone you love, or running from something frightening that is chasing you, or visiting a relative who died many years ago.

Suddenly, from far away in your waking world, you hear a loud ringing sound. It is your alarm clock. You’d set it, as always, to get you up in time for work. Instantly, your consciousness is whisked from wherever you were, and you become aware that you are lying in your bed. It is the morning of a new day. You stretch, yawn and open your eyes. You are back in this reality once more.

Sometimes our wake-up calls are not much different from the experience of being woken from a dream by our own alarm. In these instances, it is not something or someone outside of ourselves that is responsible for the radical shift in our awareness, but rather something that wakes us up from the inside out.

Some wake-up calls are not initiated from something outside of ourselves, but from within. It is as if a timer has been set to go off inside you at a certain moment, and suddenly, without any warning, it does, waking you into realizations that will be radical, disruptive and life-changing.

Why does that inner timer suddenly go off? Because it is time—some process has completed itself, and you are ready. Ready for what? That’s the thing you find out once you wake up.

Four years ago, I moved to Santa Barbara, California, from Los Angeles where I’d lived for more than twenty-five years. A move like this was a big deal and a major turning point for me—I was leaving behind the place where I’d spent most of my adult life, the location of my business, all of my familiar references and connections. “How did you come to this decision?” people would ask me, assuming I’d been pondering it for some time. The truth was that I hadn’t—at least consciously. I had always loved visiting Santa Barbara, but never could imagine leaving Los Angeles after so many years of living there. As far as I was concerned, I was in L.A. to stay.

Then one day, in one moment, everything changed. My partner was visiting me from the East Coast, and we decided to go to Santa Barbara for my birthday. I hadn’t been there for many years, and since he’d lived in Santa Barbara when he went to graduate school, I asked him to give me a complete tour. It was a spectacular California spring day, and the air was fragrant with jasmine blossoms. He drove me through the lush tree-lined streets, up into the hills, past eucalyptus groves, and finally to a beautiful beach where the ocean met the mountains in a picturesque cove. We got out of the car and walked over to the sand to take in the view.

I remember standing there bathed in sunlight, breathing in the exotic blend of sea, wind and mountain grasses, watching people having lunch at beachside tables. I was utterly intoxicated by it all. Then, as if on cue, I spotted a school of dolphins leaping in midair as they frolicked in the ocean, their silver bodies gleaming against the turquoise sky. Suddenly I felt something inside of me shift, and without even thinking about it, I turned to my sweetheart and said, “I’m moving to Santa Barbara.”

“When did you decide that?” he asked.

“Just now,” I replied, utterly surprised at my own answer. And it was the truth. I hadn’t been planning on moving. I hadn’t thought about the consequences it would have on my business. I didn’t have a place to live. I didn’t even know anyone here. But in that moment on the beach, I had somehow suddenly woken up and found myself at a crossroads that I hadn’t even been aware was approaching.

The truth about internal wake-up calls that seem to happen suddenly is that there’s actually nothing sudden about them at all. Looking back now, I can see that I had indeed been in a transition building up to my decision to leave Los Angeles—I just wasn’t consciously aware of it. For years I’d spent more and more time at home, with less interest in venturing out into the busy, bustling energy of the city, energy I used to love, but that I now found tiring. Very few of my close friends lived in the Los Angeles area anymore. The focus of my work had shifted so that I didn’t need to be there on a daily basis as I once had. Every chance I got, I found myself escaping to more serene environments out of town. The fact was that I was unhappy in L.A.—I just hadn’t wanted to face it.

In that moment standing on the beach in Santa Barbara, I woke up to the truth about what I needed to do. Maybe the alarm clock just happened to go off during my birthday trip. Maybe it had already been ringing, but I’d been too preoccupied or too resistant to hear it until I actually got some distance from my familiar world in Los Angeles. Or maybe something about that beautiful day triggered an awareness inside me suddenly to turn on like a bright light. Whatever it was, one thing was clear: I had woken up into a truth from which I could not retreat.

As we will see in the chapters that follow, all wake-up calls demand that we stretch ourselves beyond what has been comfortable and relinquish what has been safe and familiar for the promise of growth, deeper wisdom and fulfillment that may remain untasted for a while. My description of that moment on the beach may sound inspiring, almost romantic, but let me assure you that the impact this wake-up call had on my life was nothing short of frightening and terribly disruptive. It took almost a year for me to make my move from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, a year filled with complications, anxiety, painful good-byes to several longtime employees, and financial challenges. Moving here may have made sense for me emotionally, but it didn’t make sense professionally or even logistically. I knew it would require a lot of compromise, flexibility and a certain degree of sacrifice, and to this day, it still does.

I did not know what called me to this sun-drenched, sparkling town. Somehow, I just knew that I was supposed to come. Waiting for me here were gifts I could not have imagined: friends I felt I’d known for lifetimes, a serenity I had never experienced anywhere else, healing I did not even know I needed, experiences that would become priceless treasures. And if it wasn’t for that wake-up call on the beach. I might have missed out on all of it.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes. —Hugh Prather

If you are truly alive, if you are truly growing, you will undoubtedly come to many difficult transitions and crossroads in your life journey. These twists and turns are not arbitrary. If you hadn’t traveled so far down the road, you wouldn’t have come to this new set of paths, choices, and challenges. It is because you have been so courageous, so determined to learn, to seek the truth, that you are here at all.

How, then, are we supposed to behave when we collide with the unexpected, when we find ourselves at a terrifying crossroads, when we have been shattered awake? What is left for us to do after we yell and moan and cry out and protest, after we swear and sigh and scratch our heads, after we have exhausted our anger and our tears? The great thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet Jalal ud-Din Rumi, whose writings have illuminated many a dark corridor in my own life, offers us a suggestion in his classic poem “The Guest House.” Read it and see what you think:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

For now, let this be enough—to name this place you find yourself in and welcome these unexpected visitors, as Rumi invites us to do.

Know that this “crowd of sorrows,” these troubles and trials, are positioning your soul for great wisdom and, in time, will reveal themselves to be hidden doorways into a new and illuminated world.