On Laughter, Connecting, and A Reunion

Kathy Curtacci Thompson st Stonehenge

May we meet in

the center of a laugh

So we can

remember who we truly are

In beloved joy

Just call me a

friend.

From Pearl “Drops of Aloha” 
JR Coleman








My high school 50th reunion is coming up next year.  Those kind of events are always awkward. People gathering who knew each other way back when, but know nothing about each other now. An "in group" gathers to ease their own anxiety and there is laughter which the rest get to notice. Then there is the conversation with  someone who looks like no one you ever met,  and there you are without your glasses to look at the name tag. Or the person who is sharing a memory or you sharing a memory of which there is no recollection by the listener.

After the memory sharing, there has to be a moment in time when everyone gets to introduce each other as who they are today - beyond the grandchildren, what they did with their lives,  and plans for retirement. (Of course, by this reunion, there is likely to be some sharing of the meds we take and why we take them.)

One of the classmates created a page on face book and we're getting to interact before the reunion. I have really been delighted, even surprised by who my colleagues are today.

The picture of a classmate at Stonehenge was accompanied by her sharing an article she wrote about her visit to Salisbury, England. I am so grateful for her sharing who she is- and it is a great preparation for my journey to Europe next summer.

The poem at the beginning here was written by one of my classmates. I do  not remember him as a poet, artist, or otherwise spiritually orientated. Yet, this is one of the most sensitive images I have ever read.

This is so different than the memory I have of him, that I am wondering if my elder moments have gotten the best of me on this one.

I have discovered this to be true, less dramatically,  in interactions with other classmates as well.

I went to the 40th reunion, hell bent on presenting myself as the person I had become.  I spent a lot of time as a teenager hiding my social anxiety in spirits. I can honestly say, and could also say ten years ago,  that is no longer the case.  Now, I just hide or abide!!

Well, at that reunion, when it was time to introduce myself, I started with, "When I was in high school, I was a slut." The laughter which broke out as a result urged me on into a monologue accompanied with much laughter.  I felt really connected with these strangers, the same human beings who I spent five days a week with for many years. We met in the center of a laugh.

Afterwards, I was embarrassed, for exposing myself so honestly. I felt like that a lot in high school. I suspect most of us did. It wasn't about actions, big make out that I was. It was about preoccupations,  feelings, and self-perception.

I have enough training and experience in psychology to know that what I was saying was not about actions. It was about being a  self-conscious, not yet fully formed Self. And there I was, forty years later, finally confident enough to strut my stuff like never before.

Because of classmates with whom I have shared the journey into the world of Spirit over the years, without even knowing one another, I really am looking forward to this 50th reunion.

It will be more like a gathering of the clan, here on the other end of a life's time.

I hope there is dancing at this reunion. It will be a most appropriate ritual of Being who we are.

How have you experienced laughter as a source of connecting you with others?

Returning to the World

One of those rarely noticed  flowers I saw along the path that I think about often

While in Kenya, in one of the coastal district villages, I experienced an encounter that made a lasting impression on me. There in  this plush jungle village, filled with nutritious food that could be picked from a tree or greens pulled up by for its leaves and roots, was a woman sitting by the road. Not only did she have her lethargic and dehydrated  child  at her breast, the clinic was directly across the road.

Most alarming to me was observing that no one was paying any attention to the suffering of this mother and child. I walked up to her and knelt down so our eyes were level with each other. She seemed not to notice that I was there even when I said, "Habari". I looked closely at the infant at her breast. The skin of both was laying over bones, with no fat whatsoever, and very little muscle. I thought perhaps the infant was dead and the mother too weak to cross the road to the clinic.

She was not able to get up and walk with me across the road.  I summoned two young men standing close by. They carried her to the clinic steps and put her down.  I caught the attention of someone in white - nurse or doctor, I didn't much care. The voice in the body dressed in white curtly informed me that we would have to wait our turn.

There was no one else waiting at this clinic.

Not being one to stir things up in a strange place, I sat for awhile while the man in white went about his business.  Finally, I went inside, determined to have him acknowledge this obvious suffering. I also let him know it was getting dark soon and I needed to be on my way to make it to my destination.

He and I carried the woman and her baby, still at her breast, into the clinic and onto a table covered with a white sheet.The building was rudimentary. There were windowed cupboards full of supplies.  The man said he was a doctor and had been there for twenty-five years, emphasizing his history there with, "I've seen it all!".

It's as if he had read my mind and the questions it was asking about his apathetic demeanor.

He pronounced the infant dead and predicted that the woman would soon be dead, showing me a festering wound on her leg. The doctor said, "It is a snake bite and that she was already in a weakened condition when it bit."

I asked him,  "How might she have come to be so weakened?"

His reply was a lengthy monologue about the multiple causes that might result in her emaciated condition..  I listened to him tell of the extent of physical problems he had encountered in these 25 years in this jungle and of the many he had trained who had left to seek better wages.

He said his wife had left because, "She couldn't take it anymore." What I learned, as he talked,  was she couldn't take a sense of not being able to cut down the amount of physical ailments - and she feared for the health of their two children.

I thanked him for his dedication and for sharing his saga with me, said my good-byes to the doctor and the woman,  and walked on down the road to my intended destination.

I was on my way to train village residents to work together on their community's development. I felt, like the doctor, that what I was doing was worth my life.

But, as I walked down the road, I felt my whole self-story fall apart, leaving all purpose behind, It was like stripping myself of my clothes as  I went. I was feeling more like the doctor's wife.

When I arrived in the village,I was  greeted with  welcome enthusiasm. I took one deep breath, realizing that fortunately I had not actually left my clothes on the road, and was suddenly so grateful for people in this world who respond to human suffering with such hope.


when have you encountered the hopelessness of human suffering and then experienced the signs of hope beyond hope, and then experienced a renewed sense of purpose?

Do I Choose to Own the Truth?

Full moon July 2011. Like a focus in the haze of whirlwind frenzy.

Reordering business cards from Vistaprint, for an organization to which I belong, ended up nowhere - no one had the password. I thought this had been done in April when we all agreed to do it.  I had a self-imposed deadline to meet. The card only had our name and the website contact info. Communication with Vistaprint led nowhere. I opened a new account, designed a new card,  and ordered new card, and received 500 cards of very low quality.  The cards would be an embarrassment to the organization.

I had submitted an invoice to the treasurer and asked her to not reimburse me. I attempted to contact Vistaprint again, with no success. By this time, clerical skills not being one of my natural talents, I was not thinking straight and was flustered.

I didn't write down the password for the new account, so I opened another account, designed a new card with large print, and sent it off.

Then I went to Staples with one of the original cards. They said they could produce a quality card and the total would be three times as much as the original order from  Vistaprint. I ordered them and could pick them up asap.

When I got home, it dawned on me that the organization is in the process of creating a new website and the info on the business card would be useless very soon.  I was able to cancel the order at Staples.

Thoughts ran through my mind about how I could erase the whole series of events which began with somebody asking me where the $20 was going to come from in  the budget for the year. This was frustrating as well, because $20 is not much to ask for anyway, let alone its contribution to  our purpose for existing as as organization - and we had already agreed.

I realized that I had not stopped to think through at each obstacle I encountered. I had forgotten to check my intuitions about why this was not working out easily. It was a simple task I was doing. And here I was with 1000 cards - useless cards come September - to own up to responsibility for their existence.

This all was happening during the Casey Anthony trial conclusion. I had not been following the trial closely and was grateful for the opportunity to see the final stages. I could see that there was not much evidence one way or the other (I ask myself, "Who is to say I have these 1000 cards here on my desk?" - except that I have just written about it in this blog).

I put myself in her shoes - into her poor choices - into her inability to own truth and live truth. (I really was drawn to blocking out the whole business card whirlwind from my memory and creating for myself, a big lie about the whole thing).

I know there is no comparison of a few business cards to a small child's life - but there is a correlation when it comes to owning up to the poor choices we make.   I get to live with what to do with these useless business cards - and pay for them myself.  Casey has to live with her poor choices related to the fact that her beloved child is now dead.

She will be paying for her poor choices, whatever they were,  in a way that may be too painful to face. Her defense patterns, so obvious by the trial's end,  may just have her blaming anyone else for her present circumstances and more than likely concocting even another great story in her mind.

For myself, and my whirlwind of mindless energy spent for nought, with a misplaced focus, I can own it, pay for it, learn a lesson and laugh at the wasted energy in my actions.

Maybe Casey will be fortunate enough someday, to own this event in her life's time. In the meantime, no one need be concerned about her being in prison and suffering- her life will be a living hell of one pathological lie or another to cope with the pain of the reality she simply does not have the capacity to accept.

I am very grateful that my mindless acts this week in no way compare to a dead child. Nevertheless, they have provided a channel for empathy of those who act mindlessly - and for the importance of mindful discipline.

When is a time you have been embarrassed by your mindless whirlwind of poor choices? 

What practices have you learned in order to be more mindful?

How do you remember to employ them when you need them the most?

Will You Remember?

The candle lighting corner of  a Coptic chapel in the heart of St. Augustine. 
The candle I lit  was for the success of a new course that was soon to make its debut.

From philosopher Jonathan Zap:

"An extremely effective and grounded magical practice is to identify your big dreams, the missions you really need to accomplish in this lifetime. The test of a big dream comes from asking yourself, 'Will I remember this well on my death bed?' If you have a big dream, you will probably find that to accomplish it will require a minimum of two hours of devoted activity per day."

This quote catalyzed a long reflection on the big dreams I've had in my life's time. What occurs to me most prominently is that I have experienced what I would consider a huge  portion of earth shattering unexpected outcomes. I can do a great PR job on the many dreams that have come true, but they have all been accompanied with many, many set backs-  and brick walls even-  along the way. I wouldn't have missed it all for anything,of course,  and as Bob Dylan puts it, "Its All Good".

What will I remember on my dearth bed?  Emotionally overcharged events, yes indeed.

I will remember that I spent most of my life learning to own my mistakes, yes, but especially my uniqueness as a gift that I finally lived. I will be remembering the day I learned to love me being me. Maybe I will remember the event where it finally sunk in or maybe I will remember the journey from that point on.

I have met many unforgettable  people, some who have a huge list of dreams come true and make a lot of money because of them. I have met many unforgettable people who have no special claim to fame.   What they all have in common is a style of being present to the way it is without pretense or expectation. I have felt free to be me in their presence and have felt their freedom in being who they are, where they are, and what they are.

I want to be at death's door having left that presence behind in the lives of those I have encountered. I want to leave the feeling with them that they are free to be in every sense of that energy.

Since this philosopher suggests it means spending at least two hours a day on being present with that energy within myself, I still have a lot  of practicing to do, I know.

I have no other dreams than that this earth full of people can know this freedom. It is the heart of alleviating human suffering, whether it shows up as abject poverty or manic depression.

 Is it time to ask yourself, 'What is it I will be remembering  on my death bed?'