AT HOME IN THE WORLD

I went shopping very early this morning at a local flea market. I was looking for vintage photos and paper items, and other things that catch my eye. I've been doing it for a long time and by now I know a great many people - serious collectors, shoppers and sellers. Some people I know well enough to stop and chat about our latest finds; with others it's enough to smile or wave in passing. This morning I felt what I always feel - completely at home in that world, connected to so many people, part of a real community.
     That's not the only world I move through. There are at least half a dozen others. I've felt uncomfortable in some of them - tongue-tied, intimidated, and defensively arrogant. But that doesn't happen so much anymore. Most of time I'm fully myself no matter where I am. I used to judge and fear that I was being judged. I stood in a circle of friendly people and felt completely alone. There was a veil between me and the rest of the world, an opaque scrim that kept me focused on my lack of connection.
     But somewhere along the line things changed. I gave up expectations - of being liked or disliked, admired or not, noticed or not, of anything in particular. Slowly, my facade dissolved. I became myself with no shadows, no hanging back, no assessing myself and the world. I became comfortable in my own skin.
     I didn't do this myself, at least not consciously. I could never have seen so clearly what I needed to surrender and then simply gone ahead and done it. Instead, life has gone along, brought me its problems, disappointments, mistakes and in trying to process those a general equanimity has come almost as a byproduct of dealing with one thing at a time. I used to want the big picture to change in a flash of magic but that desire for magic only got in my way. But taking my life problem by problem, sometimes focused so narrowly it was obsession, I began to see the lessons in each problem and how I processed it. I began to feel the continuity of the struggle to get free, the ideas at the heart of whatever individual thing I was dealing with. Eventually, those ideas pushed to the surface, began to arch over all of my "issues" and problems, and slowly became the context of everything in my life.
     That's the reason I've become comfortable in my skin, no longer afraid (most of the time) to meet the world on the world's terms. My willingness to do what I can to get free, my quest to find a refuge inside me that I can always count on, my nurturing humility and gratitude, slowly changed me on a level I didn't even know existed in me. I didn't do all that easily, without resistance, but I did it as much as I could on most any given day.  All the time I was kicking and screaming, locked into my own ideas of what I needed, something else was taking over, floating me up and putting me down in a place I want to be.