Hi Cherie, I'm glad for you and your journey back East. It seems you've been trying to get there for some time. It takes courage to role the dice and figure out the financial world when we get there. I am about 1 year 11 months away from that myself. It's one of those paradoxes. The culture tells us to build our security before we stop, and yet I know those answers will come only after I stop. It's one of those times where we don't know that the dive off the cliff won't kill us until we've landed safely. What a ride.

I've started a lot of these letters to the editor but never finished them for various reasons. Given you're just about done, I thought I'd do this one.

In Susan Kramer's article about Salesmanship, one sentence caught my eye as it has done so often before. It is "We each have an opinion and the right to express that opinion as long as it does not hurt anyone else....". My first thought is: how in the world can we know before the hurt? I also suspect this philosophy is one of the fast paths to insanity and the death of spontaneity.

From my experience, when two people communicate there are literally two eternal stories colliding. Even if one does not buy karma or multiple lifetimes, there are, at a minimum, the experiences (joys, hurts, traumas, wounds, philosophies, concepts, beliefs, attitudes) of two lifetimes coming together when one expresses thoughts or feelings to another. So how can one possibly know when that expression will hurt another? How can one know either the eternal or life story that another carries within them? To presume so is to dance with a shadow.

I'm not talking about the extremes of dialogue and the overt intent to hurt. I'm simply talking about the common practice of two humans coming together in conversation. These meetings are meant to be spontaneous, to flow. To engage the mind in the constant appraisal of what will hurt or not is insanity and guess-work at best. We've all known innocent statements that turned ugly and our surprise that they did. There was no intent to hurt.

How could we have known the place where such statements would go without knowing the eternal journey of that soul? We can't and that's the point. It's much like faith, I suppose. There are things worthy of forethought, but there are things we simply need to do or be. I have found a much richer life in doing and being than I have in thinking about what I will do and be.

For me, it's not so much what was said but the journey we take with each other afterwards. Can we open ourselves to pain, to conflict, to confusion, hurt, distrust, fear, and the literal or figurative running away to a place of safety? And can we offer all that to another, with an aim toward healing, forgiveness, understanding, deeper relationships, and a bigger world view? This is a world of richness that is truly alive. The illusion of how best to present ourselves to the world seems sterile and lifeless to me. Instead of selling ourselves to the world, perhaps we'll one day create a world where we can simply be ourselves.

Take care of yourself Cherie and stay in touch. ken

I appreciate your thoughts about this, Ken; it helps to have someone interrupt my reading to question something I've not questioned. And I agree that I'd rather be doing and being rather than planning to do or be something. ...perhaps one day ... we will create that world.
Cherie