Detachment

I recently gave a speech titled “How to find peace in the midst of the chaos-A Personal Journey of Transformation” and shared the process of identifying, examining and resolving personal painful childhood experiences. A friend who was in the audience later remarked that what she loved about the speech was my ability to relate my painful stories from a place of detachment.

For a moment, I questioned whether I was being inauthentic by being detached and immediately recalled a poem by Rumi, called the Guest House:

GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guesthouse.
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’re 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.

We each have our painful stories and can either choose to see them as “guests”, as impermanent experiences to be understood and discarded or choose to see them as permanent memories of who we are.

I now realize that I have always chosen to see my painful stories as impermanent so they become transformative not crippling. So during my speech I was able to share them from a place of detachment, because they were simply my “valuable guests” who will eventually leave.

9/11 Remembered: Conversation with a Kid

Today I picked up my 8 yr old great-nephew from his school which is close to Ground Zero, to take him to soccer practice. Since it rained all day in New York City, soccer practice was cancelled. We made our way to my apartment and our conversation was a bit about his day at school and a lot about 9/11. He wanted to watch “something” about 9/11 on TV, so we surfed the channels and found great programming on the history channel. I realized that he was only eight months when 9/11 happened and did not fully understand the details.

For the first time he realized the planes were regular passenger planes with ordinary people like him, he thought they were kamikaze pilots flying those planes (he had recently done a project on World War 11). He then wondered why people would intentionally fly planes into the W.T.C buildings. My response was measured but honest. He got a bit sad, looked me directly in the eyes and asked; did any children die?

I quickly responded no, but there was a little voice in my head questioning the response. At that moment, at that time, the pain on his face did not allow me to share my doubt about the answer. Later that evening my research confirmed that in fact seven children had lost their lives traveling on those planes on that day. Someday I will tell him the truth about those children, but not today.

Soul Musings

Nicholas Kristof’s opinion titled How to Recharge Your Soul, in the August 9th issue of the New York Times states “in the same way you recharge your BlackBerry from time to time, you should also recharge your soul – by spending part of August disconnected from the Web and reconnected with the universe.” Is Kristof saying that if you recharge your soul you will be reconnected to the universe? So, is the soul a direct connection to the universe?

This caught my attention because I had just seen the movie Cold Souls by Sophie Barthes in which souls were extracted and stored on Roosevelt Island. When one of the owners of a soul died, the soul disappeared. So is this what happens to the soul when we die? It disappears!

But where is this soul of ours anyway? Recent books by Jill Bolte, Ph.D. a brain scientist and Keith Black, MD a master brain surgeon and quotes by Descartes and Plato made me conclude that the soul is probably in the brain….funny thing, I always thought it was in the heart.

One final musing…can the soul of a man be damaged by his mother at age three, yet he becomes the richest man in the world? Warren Buffet’s recent biography details his suffering at the hands of his mother, her tirades were constant and “she never stopped until both children “just folded,” says Warren, weeping helplessly.” By the time he was three years old…”it couldn't be put back together”, he says, for him or his sister….
”The damage to their souls was done.” Wow, sounds like you can make a lot of money with a damaged soul…is this a perquisite for being successful on Wall Street?

I agree with Kristof, regardless of where it is, where it goes after death or how badly damaged it is ...recharge it anyway by connecting to the universe. Go take a walk!