Yesterday did not turn out at all like I hoped it would. And yet it turned out perfectly. But the only way I could come to see it as perfect was to let go of how I had thought it was going to be.
I had to figure out how to be easy. Easy like Sunday morning.
(For those of you who are too young to know what that means, listen to this — and look at the images chose LOL! EASY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING SONG.)
I planned to get out early for my walk with Allie because it was supposed to get hot.
Instead, I got out almost two hours later than I had planned due to work issues, and so Allie took one stroll around the block and said. Nope.
I planned to do a little client work and a lot of my own so I could finally catch up on my own to list.
When I got back, I ended up chatting with my neighbor for half an hour, and then getting a delivery of all my dry goods and toiletries, which required unpacking. I started an hour later than I had planned. Then two of my clients ended up throwing a lot of work at me out of the blue. So I focused on that. Which ended taking up the whole day.
I planned to go for a sunset drive — to get in my car for the first time in two and a half weeks.
I got in the car, got lost and couldn’t find a road out of town. When I finally did, the phone rang and my client needed something urgently. I thought I had time for ten more minutes so I could see the sunset, but then the phone rang again and I had to have a money talk sitting in a parking lot, before rushing back to get the client work done.
I planned to take the evening off, because I’ve been working 12-hour days for four straight weeks.
When I got back the client work took longer than I thought and I decided to just finish it so I could wake up with a clean slate. I got done at 10PM. Again.
AND. It was all perfect.
My walk without Allie allowed me to go far and fast — and that was just what I needed. Especially since it turned out to be the only walk of a very long day.
My neighbor — who I just adore and is the only living breathing person I have talked to in four weeks — and I had such a great conversation. She rescues dogs, loves animals, is from the Mountain West, and grows lilacs — which are challenging to grow here.
Turns out that her daughter runs the Aveda salon here in town and has nine hairdressers working for her. And since my hair is a disaster, I know that when they re-open, I’ll know wher eto get a good haircut! Not only that, turns out that her son-in-law in New York is a big fan of my dad’s and wants to cook his way through all the recipes in my parents’ cookbook and make videos. What a small world!
So every minute of our lovely conversation was worth it.
But that’s not the perfect part. Later in the day when I stopped to take Allie out to pee, I found a huge bouquet of lilacs — my absolute favorite flowers — in a beautiful green pitcher. For me! She knew of an empty lot in town with a lilac bush and had gone and picked us both a gorgeous bouquet. The smile of my face could not have been — and still could not be — any bigger.
My dry goods arrived early and in perfect order. Since I don’t eat a lot of things, it’s hard to find food that can last a long time. Now I can bake things that will keep me going and last for quite a while. And they’re going to be delicious! I am so grateful.
All my client work took much longer than I had thought. But I finished every single thing on their list. None on mine, but all on theirs! And that felt really good.
I had a whole movie about what I hoped last night’s sunset drive would look and feel like. I thought I’d get to the top of a mountain and see the sun setting over more mountains in the West. But what really happened after my parking lot financial conversation was that I almost burst into tears. But I didn’t.
Instead I drove back to my cottage with my rose-colored glasses off — and I saw the poverty and wealth, the spring trees and the leafless winter ones, I saw the country beauty and the eerie emptiness of business closures. And all that allowed me to see — clear as a bell — that this little cottage that I ended up in is the perfect place for me to be — and that if I’d hired someone to go out and find me the most ideal spot where I could work in peace and quiet, walk to everything, feel safe, have everything I needed and love my space, they never ever could have done better than where I am right here right now.
This morning I woke up to emails from all my clients sounding so happy and delighted with everything I’d done. Which means I am sitting here writing this morning’s blog with exactly what I’d hoped for — a clean slate and a feeling of having shown up as I was asked to do for others.
I learned the huge payoff of being easy like Sunday morning. Which Quora explains thusly: To be "easy" was to be free and unattached, without obligations. The girlfriend in the song was trying to make the subject be something he wasn't, and the rest of the world was doing the same thing. So, he is leaving. He's "easy", like Sunday morning.
Three friends told me yesterday that domestic, sexual and child abuse numbers are skyrocketing right now. One friend shared something she had received from someone who is sheltered in place with a husband she is trying to leave whom she calls her “captor”. Another said that she would have been terrified as a child to have to spend this kind of time with her own mother. And a third who works for child welfare told me that if the kids are not in school, there’s no one to protect them.
In the face of all that, how can being easy help anything?
I would suggest that that is the wrong question: How can being worried help?
To be an advocate for others, to try to do whatever is with any of individual scopes to assist others — that helps. But to sit at home and worry about others, that never helps anyone.
But being easy can. Because these are heart-centered practices. We learn them for ourselves by practicing them — and then we take them out into the world. And when we learn to be easy, we move through the world as easy. When we reach a stop sign and don’t run it. When we’re waiting outside the grocery store to get in and we’re a model of calm and patience. When we call a customer service person and express our gratitude and tell them to take their time. When we find out that we’re the 750th customer on hold, and we don’t blow up in frustration and then bring that to the dinner table or our next conversation. When we’re easy, we bring that easy energy out into the world. And when others experience that ease, we help them fall back into it.
Yesterday I was on the phone with a customer service person and at some point I said laughingly about something, “Well, none of us are perfect.”
He replied, “Don’t I know that! Before I headed down to work in the basement this morning, my English wife told me that in no uncertain terms. Well, actually they were a little uncertain — because I had never even heard half the words she used. I almost had to look them up!”
He was laughing, but wryly. And he knew that he had to go back upstairs at some point to that woman who was NOT happy with him.
So after we had concluded our business, I told him a little story. I said, “When I was in college I did something that really pissed my Australian-English stepmother off. So a week later I got a four-page letter from her. In it she called me every name in every book. Now, I was in college and fairly hip, I thought. But there were words in that letter I’d never even heard. Nor had my friends. We spent a week going through all of them trying to figure out what they meant. Hmmmm — that one sounds like. . .but no. She couldn’t mean that, could she?”
Something that had been so unpleasant ended up becoming a hilarious game for my friends and me. Looking back, it was my way of figuring out how to “be easy” with my verbally abusive stepmother.
He started laughing at the story — and he was still laughing when we got off the phone. And all I could hope was that he felt a little less alone in his basement.
To be easy has a trickle-down effect. You may not be able to directly reduce the amount of abuse going on in households all over the world. But as I stay here in an area with a lot of public low-income housing, I make it my business to smile and say something hopeful and kind to every single person I meet. Whatever the color of their skin, whether they are drunk or sober, whether they are following the social distancing rules or not whether they are angry or friendly. I try to be easy and not judgmental over everyone I meet. Because I feel like sending that energy their way is the most important thing I can do right now.
And it CERTAINLY pays dividends for me. I slept like a log last night even after a rolling thunderstorm.
Being easy is a quiet low-key way of living Love. It’s yet another heart-centered practice that allows us to do our part —however big or small — in taking #LoveViral.
Because Love. Heals.
TO LISTEN TO TODAY’S VIDEO, PLEASE CLICK BE EASY VIDEO.