i learned to drive in that van

When I was young… I thought I had to like everyone… had a belief that all people were innately good… I distinctly remember a conversation with my mom in our blue Chevy van one night… she expressed some disgust for a man who had just totally cheated my dad in business… I think my dad has been tangled in a few similar situations… because he is good… never expects anything but the same from everyone… but I remember telling my mom that we shouldn’t be angry at the man… I told her that we are all God's children… I think I was a 6th grader at the time… she just quietly listened… don’t know what she thought… but I really did try to like/love everyone... when I was a freshman in high school I told my younger sister that the coolest people are the people who are genuinely kind to everyone…

When I was 15 I decided I didn’t have to like everyone… I thought it was liberating… I thought maybe the world isn’t all that pure… my high school boy friend and I glared at perky people… within my circle I still trusted in human goodness… the negativity was strictly reserved for strangers… in fact I thought that only my depressed grungy friends were real… everyone else was faking it…everyone else was living in a world of pretend…

I am really glad that isn’t the now… but now… I do find myself sizing strangers up… comparing… judging… not always liking everyone… often…

I wish I had never come to that liberating conclusion at age 15… but I think once I relearn the 6th grade innocence I will actually be in a better place… I think that is how it works right… the evolution of the soul…

I keep reading this section of this book…borrowed to me… not on purpose… I forget to mark my place and end up re-reading the same section… probably for a reason… but… it talks about old age and life…

Old age is a time of second innocence. There is the first innocence when we are children; but that innocence comes later in your life, when you have lived deeply. You know the bleakness of life, you know its incredible capacity to disappoint and sometimes destroy. Yet notwithstanding that realistic recognition of life’s negative potential, you still maintain an outlook that is wholesome and hopeful and bright. That is a kind of second innocence. It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited, to look in the eyes and find light there. That light is innocent; it is not inexperienced but rather is innocent in its trust in the good and the true and the beautiful. Such a gaze from an old face is a kind of blessing. You feel good and wholesome in that kind of company. (O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara. 1997. P185.)

So… my mantra… we are all in this together… if others can shine in my presence it is a gift to me and the them… just as there is a lot going on in this (my) little soul… there is much happening in the souls of those around me… if I allow it to be…there is meaning to be found everywhere… I have been really blessed and I owe it to God and everyone else to live these blessings… to live… to be alive…

I am trying… to understand it all… still.