To Be Continued

"So, is there sex, or better yet - love, in your life?"  

The question came from my friend Meridian during a long phone conversation yesterday.  We'd been catching up after a few months of only FB contacts.  I'd just finished telling her about the new job I recently began, and the new apartment I'll be moving to soon, how excited I feel about each, and how relieved I am to finally be in a state of receiving sufficient and reliable income - when she asked that question.

MJ & Meridian - Berkeley, CA - 2009

My answer - negative, as it has been for too long now - brought forth a typically Meridian-thoughtful response.  "Possibly becoming more settled financially and in a place that feels right to you will open up space for sex, with love, to enter."

My friend has a point - in that I have been expending quantities of energy searching for the job that would meet my needs, and even more in locating the place that feels right for me to move to (and all that moving involves).  It is entirely possible that, once all of that energy is no longer needed for those tasks there will be space/energy into which an intimate relationship can enter.

I'd like to believe that this is how it works.  I'd like to believe that the universe does hold potentially all of the things and people and situations we desire - and holds them loosely like so many gumballs in the dispenser, just waiting for us to turn the crank and release them into our sweaty hands.  I'd like to be the sort of person who trusts that good things - or at least the things we desire - are infinitely available to us if we will simply open to them.  Meridian believes that, and she's been telling me for the six years we've been friends that it's this belief that has gotten her the car, the living situation, the friends, and the love relationship she currently has.

I tend more toward a belief in fate.  I live and operate from a belief that we get what we get, and that there's very little we can do to alter what we get - for we are fated to live the life we have.  I'd have been right at home in early Greek or Roman society - in which the gods were considered all powerful and in complete and absolute charge of everything.  Of course, if what we get is harmful or dangerous or in some significant ways "bad" for us - we can reject it.  I've done that certainly.  But that doesn't mean, according to my lights, that something "good" WILL come along after.

And, believe it or not, this way of seeing the possibilities constitutes a real improvement over how I used to view the world.  For over fifty years I believed in control - that I could MAKE things happen or not, that if I just worked hard enough and strove strongly enough I would get what I wanted - regardless of the realities inherent in others or in the situation!  How much energy and time I spent trying to turn chicken shit into chicken salad!  

Life, and heart attack, and heart break, motherhood, and a lot of therapy have all taught me that, no, I'm totally NOT in charge of any of it.  And that learning has all come within the last decade.  

So - although I don't believe that the universe will shower me with all good things as Meridian does, at least I no longer believe I need to strive to make things happen.  Nowadays I focus on simply doing what I can to care for and about myself, on allowing others to support and help me as they are able, and on trusting my bodily and emotional responses to who and what shows up in my life each day.  

Maybe the energy freed up by no longer working to find the 'right' job (for the one I just began feels SO right!),  and the energy that will be available when I get settled into the new apartment - maybe all that available energy around and in me WILL draw in someone for me to love, to express sexually with.  Or maybe that energy will transform into a form of creating that is new and vibrant for me.  How wonderful it would be if BOTH happened!  

Whatever happens with this available energy, however it manifests inside of and around me, there will be a gift in it that will surprise and challenge me.  And I'll be sharing that gift in some way with whoever is open to it.  Stay tuned.