If it were your last day on earth, what would you want to be asked?
Okay, we’ll circle back to that. First, let’s lighten up a little:
What do you call it when you use a lower case at the beginning of a sentence and your grammar-police editor/friend or commenter catches you at it? A capital offense.
Every so often I like to go to this place on the Capitol of my state, which is not too far from where I live, in a neighborhood that is two parts suburbs, one part urban. My neighborhood has literally been changed on the map several times as to whether it should be included within city limits of considered a suburb. Have you ever asked yourself if you are more a country, city or suburbs kind of person?
I am all and none. I’ve lived in downtown Portland, where we squished five people into a two bedroom apartment. I’ve lived in Rural NC in the mountains. I’ve lived in Suburban New Jersey. I’ve moved a lot, so I won’t tell you all the places I’ve lived, but I can tell you I like authentic people with kind hearts and a sense of the spiritual, or at least an sense of wonder and connection to Life/Nature who think for themselves, everywhere. I don’t care what planet you’re from, what race or gender you are, whether your rural or country or suburban, what your country of origin is, or whether you have a doctorate or you are 4 years-old, if you are organized and tidy or more into improvisational creative chaos-coherence…a classical musician or a grungy tatooed person. I personally don’t have any tatoos but find other people’s fascinating. I don’t care about your religion or lack thereof, if your hair is blue or if you speak in tongues or you speak another known language and not English. Some of my most beautiful connections have been with people who didn’t speak a word of my language and didn’t speak a word of theirs. Love, like Truth, transcends words. We know it when we sense it in another, if we are open to it. I intentionally didn’t study Spanish before I went to Peru a few years ago with my son. As it turned out, some of my favorite people didn’t speak Spanish anyway. They spoke Quechua. With one woman, who is one of the absolute most incredible people I’ve ever met…we never exchanged words at all. I met her on the Tarmac. She is an Elder. I got an inner nudge to go in a certain car on the little train that takes you to a different part of the airport in Lima, and when I saw her arrive with three generations of her family, I got up to give her my seat. I initially averted my eyes to be respectful, not wanting to be a gawking tourist, but I wanted to her also sense the love, the appreciative reverence I felt for her, so I kept shyly looking up. When we got off the train, she said something to her family and then turning to me, motioned me over. She started speaking to me and I understood not a word. I would have known a few words if it was Spanish as I did study it long ago in school and I spent a month in Central America decades earlier. She realized I had no language overlap with her, and simply held up her hand in a symbol of peace, then beckoned me, and wonderfully opened her arms to welcome me into a hug. It was the most amazing hug I’ve received from anyone besides my husband.
What I do care about is that we can relate genuinely…that we can be loving and truthful…that we do away with the bullshit - The things that keep us from authentically connecting and from expression who we are in an awesome way.
I don’t mind small talk, it’s just that with me there’s no such thing. If we talk about the weather, it can be a sincere conversation about true wonder and gratitude and awe at nature’s beauty, or a sincere expression of challenge if it’s been cloudy or cold or sweltering or dry for a long bout. The weather also often inspires me to go off on metaphors. Occasionally it evokes from me comments on that which is natural…and unnatural.
If we happen upon each other, we may not talk for long, but it will be probably be a little different than a typical five second or five minute conversation for most people. For me, this is ordinary. It is ordinary and extraordinary. But that is what I think we all are - although we have forgotten and are now remembering, bit by bit. If you and I are in the same circle, or standing in line, or facing one another on the sidewalk, unless you are one of a few neighbors whose non-verbals I’ve learned to read for when they are and are not in the mood to interact beyond the perfunctory, we will not pretend things are other than they are too each other, or at least I will not. I am only sometimes an open book about my personal process, as I have learned from experience that there is such a thing as oversharing…It’s all about listening for alignment. I find that relating from alignment and integrity and inspiration with a good amount of freedom of self-expression is my groove. When it comes to my convictions, often they will fly out of my mouth like a worm offering its baby partially chewed food. Some people may find it distasteful, but usually I don’t do it for them. They people I do it for usually appreciate it, like the baby bird does, but not everyone is exactly ready for it ,because it might happen on a Monday, say. Or a Sunday. The lovely thing is that most people with whom I end up having these conversations is either very used to me, or is, on some level, sensitive to vibration enough to realize I am a safe person with whom to express equal candor. I’ve had people tell me they were a little hungover on more than one occasion. Sometimes people tell me how they really are and start to cry and then apologize and then I have to reassure them that there is no need to apologize for crying, and I am so mystified that people feel that there is…I’m mystified…frankly, I’m honored if someone feels safe enough to cry with me, and I don’t find it weird. I find it weird when people’s insides don’t match their outsides. I find it weird when people don’t talk about what is important and do talk about what is unimportant. Having one child diagnosed on the spectrum and another would would have been had she been tested, I look back on my childhood and wonder, as I’ve known a number of other women to do, if I would have gotten a diagnoses. I still walk on my toes. I spent most of my thirties being told by various intuitives that I needed to get more grounded. One year I got everything red without trying to, apparently as the universes way of trying to help me do this: My son picked out a red Prius for me. I ended up being drawn to a red dress and a red wallet and a red hand bag. My favorite color is not red. But I have learned to love it.
Have you ever been confronted with a question that you weren’t expecting, in a way you weren’t expecting it?
I was doing something ordinary - a ritual that millions of others participate in daily: ordering coffee. It is one of the more normal things I do, other than shit and open my shades in the morning. And the barista - whose name I learned was Ben, asked me a pointed question. He looked me straight in the eye, like this was the last question on the LSAT, or an important job interview, or the last one I was going to get asked before entering the pearly gates and said, “One final question: Cows milk, or oat?” I wasn’t ready for that. Shoot! I hadn’t thought about it. Well I always got oat, or I have for the last two years at least, so it wasn’t hard. “Oat,” I replied. And then explained how I’d thought when he said final…well I hoped it wasn’t going to be the last question before my transition to the What’s Next, however it got me thinking…”What question would you want to be asked as the last one before you exit this life for the next?” It was Ben’s turn to be caught off guard. “It’s okay, I said, you can answer me next week.” He smiled and said, “Okay, I might need to have a think on that one and get back to you next week.” But just as I turned to go, I heard him suddenly express what had come to him: “Who do you want to see?”
What a wonderful last question! In retrospect he could have meant friends or family in this world, but I immediately thought about how most people who have a NDE are met by someone they knew in this life. How wonderful if you could get asked before hand who you’d like to see, and in what order!
Ben asked me what I would want to be the last question asked if me before departure from Earth. I haven’t thought of my own response yet. He’ll be hoping to hear it next week though.
What would yours be?