I am indebted to
Charlene Afremow
who inspired this conversation.
We sat cross legged side by side in the evening together, shoulders,
elbows, hips, and knees lightly touching. A rich sense of intimacy
pervaded the two of us and the entire forested knoll we had climbed to
enjoy. As we exchanged quiet conversation, someone spoke and someone
answered and neither of us was quite sure who spoke or who answered ...
as if there was only one.
Immediately behind the intimacy, like oaky tannins on the back palate
of a finely crafted Cabernet Sauvignon, I distinguished a profound
sense of
privilege
to be sitting here with this woman. She's the one who, for me, put the
"i"s into
intimacy.
I've known many people in my life, as have we all. With some I've
occasionally experienced the depths of true intimacy. With others I've
experienced being close but not true intimacy. And even with those with
whom I've experienced true intimacy, it's wavered, wobbled, from
time to time. Now you see it, now you don't. It's not been
a perpetual, gold pad switch permanently on, always there
experience.
With this woman whom I've known for nearly
thirty years,
thirty years, there's not been one encounter - not one - that
hasn't been intimate. That's who she is. That's what she stands for.
That's what she sources, and she's tireless and brilliant at what she
does. Every person fortunate enough to be around her is immediately
awash in that possibility of being for human being.
She asked me how I was doing. The question shook me out of my reverie.
I told her I've been waking refreshed early in the morning already
anticipating
what the day could bring. I don't recall when it started being this
way. I just know at some point it stopped mattering what I've been.
What I look forward to is what could happen, what I
could become. I said I've got no proof of nor inside
information about what could happen next. I'm neither psychic
nor clairvoyant. Yet whatever not now known which is
coming next intrigues me. I look forward to it. I'm clear what I invent
as a possibility for myself and my life and enroll others in my having
gotten determines the next iteration of my life. It literally
determines what I have and will have in my life. I told her it's more
than that, actually. I said I'm noticing when I live this way, the
timeline of my life is no longer the almost always unexamined past
determines the future but rather the erstwhile unthinkable
future I create
recontextualizes
the past.
I told her my waking life has an acute sense of pleasure and
privilege
as if this experience is a gift from somewhere I know not where, that
it feels like what grace must feel like, that the simple
excitement of wondering what could happen next is all the
entertainment I need. But not frivolously.
She listened intently, not saying anything for a minute or so. Then,
just as I was certain she wasn't going to say anything at all, she
shifted her gaze from the horizon and pointed the
megawatt hazel green lasers
of her twinkling sensual eyespoint blank into my eyes and said "That's future as
possibility.".
I love the way she said it. She literally spoke my experience ... as if
she was coming from inside me.
She's bang on the
money.
Future as possibility is obviously exactly what's coming next.
The future is an anything can happen discontiguous
unpredictable possibility from which I can live with openness, joy,
creativity, choice, and freedom. From time to time that is
how I live. Yet mostly there's a stop which interrupts me living that
way, relegating my future from discontiguous unpredictable possibility
to probable almost certain slo-mo action replays of my past.
That stop, I saw, is my own instinct to survive. But something
had shifted. Until I had this conversation with her, I'd always
considered the need to survive to be synonomous with the need to
protect myself. But it's no longer that. To survive, I saw, is
simply to perpetuate the past.
No wonder nothing new shows up. No wonder at some point it's no longer
delicious to get up in the morning. No wonder the childlike "I don't
wanna go to bed!" is replaced with the yearning for
opportunties to go to bed early and to
sleep
in late. No wonder life starts to creep on intolerably at this petty
pace (as
William Shakespeare
may have said).
I declared myself to her to be the possibility of communication,
transformation, and freedom.
Then I took her hand in mine and she let me hold it. I waited
breathlessly for whatever would come next.