Embracing the Humanity of the Situation

One week day, I had dropped my son off at his program. As I drove out of the parking lot, I felt this immense joy and a merging of my whole self. I had remembered a time not too long before this event, when I was sitting at my laptop, manifesting this experience that had great importance in my life. I had made the decision and tied down dreams to reality, making it happen.

I had willfully created this event. My being exuded delight as I lovingly wrote a check and paid for this amazing experience for my child. It felt like a merging of dreams and reality, and a joining of my creative divinity with my humanity.

Another day, same time, same day, a week later, in the same place, something different occurred. As I was leaving, I was carefully observing the neighboring cars, ensuring I would not pull out at the same time. Slowly, I had backed up and tapped a car’s bumper behind me, just as I had shifted from reverse into drive. 

I didn’t even feel the bump as my vehicle had a metal bumper and it hit a smaller, plastic one. After getting out of the car, I had conveyed my apologies countless times, concerned with the other parent’s vehicle. I had given her my insurance information and that was that. 

It was when I had reached my car, when I got in to drive away, that emotions had come rushing over me. I felt fragmented into various uncertain and unpleasant emotions. I felt disorganized, messy, concerned about repair cost, and less than whole and solid. Just plain old not together. It was a disorganizing, shaking sensory experience. As the day wore on, I had felt exhausted from the scornful flush.

As *life* sense tends to present itself so simply and magically when we are attentive and aware, on the radio, a few hours later I got my message. I had tuned in to the Rob Base song, “Joy and pain is like sunshine and rain.” My body allowed a deep, pausing breath as I had made the connection and realized that both joy and pain, like two sides of a coin, have their place in the same space. 

We are able to experience on such a vast spectrum, inside our beings. I am awed at how immensely powerful we are as humans to be able to experience emotions on such grand feeling scales. It is part of the gift of our humanity, in whatever form it takes.