Creating a village....

Well, gosh! After half an hour of arguing with Blogger about uploading a photo and getting the cursor back to the template, I've forgotten entirely what I wanted to post about! I'm beginning to kind of enjoy my morning tussle with the service. Can't upload photos in Internet Explorer but can in Firefox. Can not type text into Firefox but can in Internet Explorer. Then comes the tango with the spacing and paragraphs. Gee, I don't know whether to laugh or throw my computer out the window!

Jai yen yen! Jai yen yen! Calm heart! Calm heart!

It's hard when I feel like taking a mallet to this whole thing! :)

Anyway, last night I began giving some thought to how we create community. This is more complicated than just "meeting other people and doing something." It is a process that begins from the inside and manifests outward. For those of us who were planted in the wrong garden, that can take some examination. Since I didn't discover "my" community until I was post-50 years old, there are some very distinct challenges. In many ways, I'm like a feral cat who has been taken in by kind strangers who give me a safe place to sleep, food and nurturing. There are times when I have to be very careful to not "scratch" these kind people as a result of my own past experiences. One of the primary blocks I find to community-building is .... me. My preconceived notions about people, my expectations and my past.

Around 8PM last night, I heard from my Target friend again. He asked if I was done being angry with him.

"Angry?"

"Yeahm. You sounded really mad."

I was surprised to hear him say that because I didn't feel angry. I felt disappointed.

It took a while but the time comes when we do have to look at other people's perceptions and evaluate the correctness of them. Big gifts can be disguised in sentences. Listening is how we receive. No one is "right" all the time. Not even me. (That's a joke... )

P. and I continued our conversation and it was enlightening, to say the least.

He was right and I was wrong.

I was responding to him with my "old stuff". My feral stuff. My claws came out and I scratched. In my attempts to create community over the years, I've been disappointed so many times that I've come to expect it. And that's how I respond. At the first sign of potential rejection, I buck up and get ready for flight. Like the proverbial puppy that's been kicked too many times, I run as soon as it looks like it might possibly happen again. It's a small wonder that anyone can put up with this. Good grief! The friends I have are going to heaven for sure! Ghod bless 'em all! I'm just an extremely fortunate woman. There are people who see value in me, even when my behavior doesn't justify it.

This is something I've tried to fix over the years. I've tried therapy, New Age thought, NLP, affirmations and every other thing that might break the programming. Now it occurs to me that I owe it to others to break the pattern and begin to give them some credit for decency. In reality, there are very few people who intentionally harm others. Sometimes that's the real key to change. It stops being about us ~ and starts being about others.

And from now on, I will make the conscious effort to remember that. I don't want to be a prisoner of old patterns, old ways of thinking, especially those that no longer serve anyone.

P. and I continued our conversation for two hours. (!! Two hours on the phone is a long, long time!) We found so many things we have in common. Our political views are similar, our values are similar, our general worldviews are similar.

And to think... I almost missed out on a wonderful new friend because of old fears.

It's criminal.

He says he has the solution for me. (I was just as honest with him as I have been here this morning. In fact, I gave him the URL to the blog.) He wants me to go with him to some events, specifically Asian events. He says "you'll fit right in." I laughed and said, "yeahm. My whole oversized British self, eh?"

"Oh, crap," he said, "you're more Asian than I am!" (Interesting coming from a guy with a Cantonese accent so thick that can be sliced with a knife!)

But.. he's probably right. Sometimes we have to go in search of community that fits our shape and size. My evolution to *TBC (Thai By Choice) has opened doors that were never open before. That's something I want to explore a bit more in a general sense. There are so many people who can not find community. We live in a culture that idolizes self-sufficiency and independence. Truthfully, no one is completely self-sufficient, nor are we all that independent. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Yet we continue doing it.

So.. thanks to all who know me and have put up with this rather distasteful aspect of my being. Thanks for the times you coaxed the scared little puppy out of the hole in the wall.. and accepted me anyway. I commit to you.. and to me.. that I will fix this.

Thanks, P. You said what I needed to hear. I owe you a lunch.

May all beings be free from the tyranny of my expectations.


Peace all ~

~Chani