A Spare Key: Seeing a Little More Clearly

Sometimes, we have more to say than others. Here’s a spare key from Tracy.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, called September 22, 2010, I posted about “do, or do not.” I want to remind you of part of the quote I included at the end of that post:

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

William Hutchinson Murray put it much more elegantly than I did when I emailed Kel earlier today:

OK, seriously. Floodgates opened up somewhere, and the universe said, Lo, there shall be assistance, and it shall be good.

The daily feng shui tip I got is all about “evaluate your life day” and my horoscope is pretty spot on with converting apprehension to comprehension, which is, essentially, WHAT MY POST IS ABOUT. And then Baker posts this: The Architect’s Guide to Breaking Free of Your Matrix. My comment on it is awaiting moderation. [note: I have been very nervous about commenting on anyone else's blog.]

And lo, she commented and shared her thoughts, and it was good. And the universe said, so what do you want next? And she went off to think about it, but said: first, I must point this all out to my friend. And the universe said, that’s cool. Just don’t take too long.

I expected good things to come of this process, but I never expected to find inspiration in my horoscope. But I’m finding that now that I’ve done this work, committed to figuring out what I’m really doing to myself and paying attention to it, it’s like I opened the floodgates and inspiration is coming from everywhere. It’s in my email inbox, the blogs I read, at physical therapy and in cooking dinner. I’m keeping index cards and notepads and pens at the ready. I’m getting out of bed to go and scribble down notes.

I’m telling you this, because this is what Kel and I hope for you. We can’t do the work for you, but we can see how good this is for us, and want you to have it too.

Whatever it is that drives you and feeds your soul—whether it’s painting or writing, volunteering or singing or knitting—it doesn’t matter what that is. There’s something there, even if you don’t know what it is yet. Doing this work, finding the things that hold you back, is going to unleash something amazing in your life if you let it.

I won’t lie to you and tell you it’s easy. I said on Monday that it sucks, and I stand by that. I really was sitting in the parking lot on the verge of tears. I’ve been exhausted every night, had strange dreams, and have eaten more sugar in the past few days than I have in a long time trying to comfort myself through this process.

But, I can already tell it’s working. This uncomfortable, icky thing I’ve been doing is yielding results I can see, right now. For once this isn’t something that I trust will happen, or something that I think should follow. Right now, this very minute, I know without a doubt that it works.

I may not have it all figured out just yet, but I know it’s going to be good.

I even have a true story to illustrate the point!

My parents paid for me to have LASIK done for my 30^th birthday. My dad had done it recently, and he was quite insistent that it was fantastic and I should go do it too. Now, I’d driven him to his procedure, and to be honest, there’s something really freaky about seeing the eyeball of someone you love on a 19-inch TV screen as it’s being resculpted by a laser. Truly, more something to give you nightmares than make you want to do it yourself.

However, I was pretty tired of having to shove the bedside clock up against my nose to make out any numbers, and of having no peripheral vision, so I went. The day of the surgery I took my Valium, and waited my turn. I sat down in the chair, and handed over my glasses. This dark blob—I was pretty sure it was my doctor—came over, and started doing freaky stuff. (At least, freaky if you’ve ever seen A Clockwork Orange. I had; therefore, I was freaked.)

It wasn’t too bad at first—it had been worse to see this done than have it done. But then it came time to create the corneal flap. I’ll leave out the graphic details, but I will tell you that it was excruciating, and by that time in my life I’d had two kids (without epidurals) to compare the sensation with. And just at the point where I was about to scream that I couldn’t take it, please stop…it stopped. The doctor did his thing with the laser, put in some eye drops, and it was done.

I sat there with my corneas recently cut and my eyes full of oily goop, and I looked up at the doctor.

He had a face.

It was blurry, but there was a nose on a face instead of a range of colors, and I could already tell that this had worked. Really worked. And suddenly I got why my dad had been raving about it. It may have sucked for a few minutes, but it was going to be so worth it in the long run.

That feeling, that knowing that the effort going to be so worth it—that’s what we want for you.

Neither Kel nor I can do the work for you. Just like we couldn’t go and have eye surgery for you, we can’t see the monster in your hold. I can tell you about the Kraken in mine and hope that helps you want to name yours. Maybe you carry around the boogeyman, or your third grade teacher who belittled you, or the bully who taunted you every day of sixth grade. Maybe it’s a hydra made out of all of them. But until you look, you don’t know who’s there, and until you know who’s there, you can’t DO anything about them. You just get to feel scared and helpless, and that sucks far more out of you than you want to know.

What I’m finding now, just in these few first moments of this, is that by committing to doing this for myself, the floodgates have been opened. “All manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance” are starting to come my way.

I want you to know that feeling too. I can’t do the work for you, but I can let you watch my procedure, and I can tell you that it wasn’t great for part of the time, but hang in there, because the benefits are so worth it.

(By the way, Kel: the benefits are SO worth it. Thank you, a million times over, for the shove.)

Love and hope,

Tracy

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