I’m watching Love, Actually. Well, really I’m listening to it while I clean my apartment and put away four loads of laundry before finally climbing into bed at 11:40. I guess the best part of having two weeks off of work is that I can at long last stay up late and write. Most women would probably agree that the holidays are the hardest time of year to be single. Starting before Thanksgiving and running all the way through Valentine’s Day we are inundating with diamond commercials. I’ve starting calling it the “diamond season”, not altogether jokingly. Engagement rings, earrings, necklaces, tennis bracelets, watches, on and on for four months the advertising world is telling us that some man should be buying us jewelry and showering us with love. I’d like to know what they think relationships look like the rest of the year.

The other night on my way home I drove by the City and County building. Every year the city of Denver puts together a beautiful Christmas display. The whole building is covered in lights. There’s a nativity scene and Santa’s workshop. Traffic gets backed up all along Bannock as cars slow down or park to get out and enjoy the lights. When I was a little girl my family would come to Denver for an afternoon to go Christmas shopping. This was a BIG deal. Long ago, the Tabor Center was a great little downtown shopping center, cute stores, right on the 16th Street Mall. After shopping we would get a carriage ride around downtown to the City and County building and then back to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. The whole day was a treat. I remember thinking what an amazing city Denver was, how lucky I was to have such an amazing family, how gorgeous Larimer square was under the lights, how perfect Christmas in Colorado was…bundled under tons of blankets and dressed up a little for the occasion all I felt was love. Funny how driving by the lights this year all I felt was alone.
Someone once told me that there is a difference between feeling lonely and feeling alone. I agree. I don’t often feel lonely. I do, however, often feel alone. It’s not a feeling I really enjoy. I long for the day when I can cuddle up with the man of my dreams in front of the fireplace after a long day of Christmas shopping and celebrating and wrapping and baking and just settle into each other’s arms.
Being single during the holidays seems to be multiplied under the strain of the commercials, the happy couples and families everywhere, the lights, the carriages, the music, the parties where my parents friends actually have the gall to ask me why it is that I’m still single. “Gosh,” they say, “you’re so cute and smart and funny and…why can’t you find a man?” I’m not really sure what they expect as a response to this. “Well, I am apparently not that smart or cute or funny” or “I’m just too picky” or “Well the men I like, don’t seem to actually be interested in me”. I’m considering wearing a sign around this year that says, “Yes, I’m still single. But I’d rather be single and sort of happy than in a relationship and miserable. Or divorced once, twice, even three times by 28.” I know too many people who are in marriages or relationships that are painful at best and torturous at worst and I do in fact know someone who is on her third marriage at the age of 29. None of which is really what I’m looking for! I want to know going into the relationship that it isn’t going to end in tatters, in tears and angry words. In boxes packed and gifts returned, in friendships lost and in time essentially wasted. So I guess what I’m looking for is a guarantee. Someone who can say I love you today and I will do everything in my power to love you more tomorrow and more the next day. Someone who will expect the same from me. Someone who will say, “You’re worth taking the risk of giving you my heart” and “I know my faith is well put in you”. Someone who won’t over analyze every part of everything that happens around two people. I’m looking for someone who can put their trust in me enough that I can be reminded of how to put my trust in other people.
I realize as I say this that before anyone can put their trust in me I have to trust myself. Which I don’t. Not at all. Something I’ve been working on this year, a lot. Don’t seem to have gotten very far. Well, ok, I do trust myself on certain things…teaching, my family, I mostly seem to have that under control, mostly. I just don’t trust myself in relationships. I don’t seem to have the very best taste in men. I don’t seem to listen to my own intuition. And up to this point I don’t seem to be able to actually change that. Which is disturbing. I know better. I know I can change it. I just haven’t yet…and I don’t seem to be in any hurry to do so. Yet I know that in order to find the man of my dreams I’m going to have change it. A lot of what I’ve done this year has been about changing my relationship with fear. I seem to have processed that on a very physical level and very little on an emotional or spiritual level. What risks am I willing to take in order to get what I want? What am I willing to let go of to find this man? Can I handle getting my heart broken again? I tend to fall hard, fast and without much thought. Which I’m sure can work in my favor, however in the past really hasn’t. Can I fall in love without losing myself? Can I trust my own judgment when it comes to men? Soooo many questions…and, for now, no real answers.

So, instead of going out on a Saturday night I’m at home doing laundry, dishes, etc. Watching Akeelah and the Bee. There’s a point in this movie where the two finalists have a conversation about giving it their all. They shine with all their knowledge and therefore, give each other the permission to shine as well. As they run through the 25 championship words they cheer each other on, taking joy in each success and in the success of their competitor. This is truly Win-Win. By being our most excellent, extraordinary, highest selves, we know that nothing that anyone else does can take away from us. Call it trust, faith or just calm…these children know and express something that adults rarely see and almost never believe in… Your success does not take away from me…it does not diminish me. On the contrary, your success floods me with success. Why is it that as children we are capable of seeing this and expressing it and that as adults we almost completely lose the capacity to see it?

At an earlier point in the movie Akeelah reads a quote attributed to Nelson Mandela, “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people wont feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It’s not just in some: it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Actually this quote is from a book by Marianne Williamson, one of my favorite inspirational authors. It really addresses my fears: being powerful, brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. Many of us seem to be afraid of being to smart, funny, rich or hardworking so we play down our strengths and this diminishes the entire energy of the universe.
It reminds me of an experience I had with preschoolers this year. There was a box, large enough for one child to fit in, not large enough for more than one child. One of the children’s father’s decided that before he left that morning that he would drive this box around the room at high speed. Each child took a turn. They all trusted that they would get their turn. There was no fighting over whose turn it was…they took joy in each others’ joy. As each child took their turn the other children laughed and clapped as if they too were in the box. If they had already gone they might have remembered how great it felt. If they hadn’t gone yet they were still anticipating the joy they themselves would feel…their own joy fed the joy of the group, which fed joy back to each child.  How smart these children are. How intuitive. No jealousies erupted. No harsh words spoken. Just love and joy, enjoyment, anticipation, shared enthusiasm.
How is that as adults we come to fear other’s successes? Personal and professional, there’s not enough for all of us to play. We never get enough turns. When it’s our turn we spend the time thinking of how it will end. When it’s not our turn we feel jealous and resentful. We never live in the moment as adults…WHY? So busy thinking of all the other things going on around us? So many experiences that tell us not to celebrate little victories, because they’re not really that important. Not to experience big victories because after a big victory comes a big let-down. We have become so afraid of living the lives we imagine that we chose to live the unimagined life.
This is why I teach…How can we create a generation of children who will live their lives in celebration and victory? Only by living lives in celebration and victory and not just celebrating our own, individual successes. We must celebrate with people around us. We must truly experience their moment as if it is our moment, their moment does not take away from us, it only creates new possibilities of potential moments. We must see their joy as our joy, their celebration as ours, their victories as our victories. The collective power that comes from celebrating each other and the positive energy that is then created is, in fact, unstoppable. Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” As we BE the change, we change the world. As we celebrate with each other, encourage each other and live our own extraordinary lives we change the world.
Akeelah ends the movie with this line, that I think really sums it all up, “You know the feeling where everything feels right? Where you don’t have to worry about yesterday or tomorrow? Where you feel safe and know you’re doing the best you can? There’s a word for that…Love. L-O-V-E.”
With great respect to Marianne Williamson, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Wilhite and Doug Atchison who wrote Akeelah and the Bee and to all philosophers who work to raise the consciousness in our world.

I decided yesterday to walk to school today. What’s the point in living in the city if I don’t take advantage of it? I have not walked to classes since my junior year of college. Not all that many years ago, but in a very different lifetime. It seems that I am almost an entirely different version of myself… a more authentic, mature, calm, self-aware version. Since then I’ve earned both my bachelors and masters degrees, started teaching, moved across the country and back, fallen in love, got my heart broken, cut my losses and learned a lot about myself and how I view the world around me.
As I start out walking across the Office Max parking lot towards Colfax I see a parked police car and decide that it’s not such a bad idea to walk down Colfax, at least for a while. In my neighborhood, at least within a few blocks of my place Colfax really isn’t that scary. I walk towards Immaculate Conception, my favorite church in all of Denver. For some reason I just love the idea of this gorgeous cathedral right smack in the middle of the one of “most dangerous streets in America”. Last weekend when I was just moving in, there was a wedding. I could hear the bells ringing to celebrate their vows and it filled me with some odd sort of joy, love and hope. These strangers, people I don’t even know are choosing to spend their lives together. Making a commitment to each other and their union and I got to celebrate it with them. I love this church.
I see a group of people, five maybe six, gathered half a block down on my side of the street and figure that this is a good time to head over to 16th… I’ve been thinking about how to navigate my neighborhood. Walking down Colfax past the Capital sort of implies seeing a number of people who are homeless or sleeping off a bender or some sort of high. I’m not sure I want to wake anyone who happens to be sleeping on the marble steps or the lawn. In fact, I’m sure I don’t want to wake them!
I head downtown and am surround by buildings that grow taller and taller and more generic. All of a sudden I begin to wonder if I am in St Louis, Oakland, even Phoenix. These are not cities that I’ve spent much, if any time in, but this part of Denver feels like any other medium sized city. It ceases to be unique, to be vibrantly Colorado and I wonder if my feelings on this will change as I get to know this area better.
I head down the 16th Street Mall. It is amazingly quiet this time of day. A street sweeper goes by. The MallRide cruises back and forth. Outside of the Starbucks a man is playing the harp. He has a Red Flyer wagon packed with blankets and clothes and what must be all his worldly possessions that he uses as a bench. He has a little hat out in front of him, with a few coins and bills in it, although it’s so early I have a hard time believing he’s actually making money. His eyes are closed and he sways back and forth to the music he’s creating. It’s not very pretty as harp music goes; it sounds slightly out of tune, I think, and he often plays discordant notes, as if he really doesn’t care. It seems he is only playing for his own enjoyment and it adds a nice layer to the sounds of the city in the morning.
Coffee takes much longer than it should. The people in front of me are having a conversation with the barista about the newly re-mastered Beatles CDs that Starbucks music is hawking these days. The man wonders if it is a cover album; it’s not and I wonder how in the world Starbucks got the rights to re-master and re- release these albums.
I walk down the block where my ex boyfriend and I had our first big fight. I walk past the Paramount and Marlowe’s and past the corner where I threw the bag of freebies at him after the Warren Miller film we saw with his friends all those years ago. I can almost see shadows of us from that night… signs that were telling us that we weren’t the perfect fit we had both imagined we were. Signs we wouldn’t listen to until much later, until it was too late for us to do anything except break up.
By this point I realize I’m definitely going to be late for class and I’m not sure if this realization is a defense mechanism in response to dealing with the memories of Ben. I’ve been strolling along, taking in the city and the day, reflecting on how my life has changed and how I’ve ended up exactly where I’m supposed to be, even though it’s not where I thought I would be or where I thought I wanted to be. Now I have to pick up the pace and shut down some of the reflection so I don’t walk in absurdly late.
As I walk down Larimer, hurrying now, I see a couple in their mid to late 40s with three enormous Great Danes. Everyone is stopping to talk with them and pet the dogs. I watch a car stop at a green light to comment on these beautiful creatures. Crossing Speer against the light, I have to hustle to avoid getting hit and I realize that I’m so busy talking to myself about this walk, about my life that I’m not exactly present. I’m just so inside my own head this morning that I’m only attending to events or people that resonant with me. Since I’m not driving cars aren’t really in my realm of consciousness.
The sidewalk in front of the building is wet and I splash in the shallow standing water. The sound of my shoes and the sprinklers distract me from the reality of actually having to go in, to relinquish this perfect September day and enter a classroom with no windows. Many days I enjoy continuing my education. I love learning the theories and then being able to relate them to my practice in the classroom. But today I just want to stay outside. I want to sit under this cloudless blue sky and watch the sun move the shadows on the ground. I want to hear the breeze move through the trees and feel the warmth of the early fall light on my skin. I take a deep breath, capture the essence in my memory and walk inside.