Life Lessons

Love: Whether it's between friends, family members, or a man and a woman, love can be complex - but it doesn't have to be! Love is wanting to be together, having mutual respect for each other, and having fun. Love is a beautiful and magical feeling.

Forgiveness: I believe we must forgive whenever possible, but sometimes there are certain things or people we cannot forgive, no matter how hard we try. This is when we must give it to God, for God is greater than we are and can take care of whatever we can't.

Releasing guilt: Guilt is a spiritual killer. The only place guilt has in your life is if you did something to another person with malice - for example, intentionally harming someone. Otherwise, guilt is a useless exercise that destroys spiritual growth.

Strength: Strength is nothing more than enduring life - to be able to survive the heartaches and agonies we go through with our heads held high. Sometimes just walking through adversity to get to the other side is a sign of strength.

God, if I forget you, please do not forget me.

I wanted to take a moment to share with you these beautiful words from Gandhi.  It is a small reminder to love and forgive others but most importantly, forgive yourself for we are only human.  And no matter what, never forget that God is there with you...

God, help me to tell the truth to the strong and to avoid telling lies to get the weak’s applause.  If you give me fortune, do not take away my reason.  If you give me success, do not take away my humility.  If you give me humility, do not take away my dignity.  God, help me to see the other side of the medal.  Don’t let me blame others of treason just because they don’t like me.  God, teach me to love people as I love myself and to judge me as I judge others.  Please, don’t let me be proud if I succeed, or fall in despair if I fail.  Remind me that failure is the experience that precedes triumph.  Teach me that forgiving is the most important in the strong and that revenge is the most primitive sign in the weak.  If you take away my success, let me keep my strength to succeed from failure.  If I fail people, give me courage to apologize and if people fail me, give me the courage to forgive them.  God, if I forget you, please do not forget me.

                                                                                    -Mahatma Gandhi

The Woman in Me

Who am I really?  That's the question that digs deep into my soul on a daily basis.  Why do I exist in this big world?

In packing it in and moving back into my parents' house over a year ago, I was forced to eliminate 30% of my possessions and store the remaining 70%, divvied up between my old bedroom and the garage.  I haven't been able to sleep in my own bed or use my own dresser since then.  All I have are my clothes, my computer and a few other small items.  As the months have passed and I've continued to work on myself on the inside, I've been learning how not to associate myself, my inner being, with material things.  "Things" are what tend to define us as a society.  We are so focused on our cell phones, computers, TVs, iPods, clothes, cars and sadly, our profiles on social networking sites, that we forget what matters most - nurturing our souls.  I made a conscious decision to separate myself from as many of the above intruders as I possibly could.  I call them intruders because they "intrude" on our lives by providing us something external to focus on rather than to look ourselves in the mirror and face our own imperfections.  I mean really, who wants to face their demons?  The social networking sites like Facebook impede on our intimate relationships with a false sense of communication.  We accumulate these foreign objects over time as our badge of honor.  These "things" represent who we are by reflecting a false image to others of the type of person we are.  But are “we” really that person that we’ve created?

For me, the "separation process” began over two years ago after reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose."  I hadn't yet made the decision to move out of the fast-paced city of Los Angeles, where I became sort of a wild child in comparison to my past.  I knew that the girl I was when I moved down to LA no longer existed.  I understood that I was changing, slowly peeling the layers off to uncover the true me.  I read self-help books, listened to "A New Earth" podcasts in order to speed up this process of discovery and I talked to my friends openly about the changes I felt taking place.  What I quickly discovered is that I was going through this all alone.  My "friends" couldn't understand this major evolution I was enduring.  This wasn't an experience to be shared with others because they couldn't help me to define the real me.  What they knew was the girl on the outside, the one I showed to them over time with my clothes, musical tastes, the company I kept and the places I liked to go.  In realizing how little they actually knew about me, it pushed me harder to get to know myself.  How could these people know the real me and love me if I didn't know myself?   

What I discovered is that as I was changing.  My view of these people I called "friends" was also changing.  I didn’t want to be around people who represented this facade of a life I was living.  I could no longer see myself spending my time with people who weren't also on a spiritual journey and wanting to grow, rather than staying in the same place emotionally for the next 20 years.  This wasn't an overnight process.  I didn't wake up one day and say to myself, "Hey, I think today's the day you're going to find the true you and leave all your friends behind."  No, that’s not the way it works.  This is a journey I'm still taking and hope to always remain on.  Unfortunately, my "friends" haven't been as understanding as I'd hoped.  Instead, many of them have taken it personally.  I've tried my best to handle it with grace but in the end, they just couldn't grasp where I was coming from and have decided it wasn't worth it to keep me in their lives at all if the relationship couldn't remain the same.

Coming back home, I've eliminated items such as clothes that either didn't fit or were out of style, books, CDs, old bank and credit card statements, and other "junk," which in turn, has led me to the non-material things like old emails that I was saving in my inbox, along with other documents on my computer that had no real value or meaning and didn't need to be held onto.

I've done my best to be less dependent upon the computer or phone to communicate with loved ones.  Of course, sometimes it's the only way to reach out to the ones you love who live far away.  But I don't want to be a slave to technology anymore.  I want to live in the moment, focus on the people that are standing right in front of me and giving me the love in return that I know I deserve.  I'm less interested in allowing Facebook to consume hours of my time with updating my status and playing virtual games.  I do still send the occasional message or write on a friend's wall to say hello and let them know I'm thinking about them but I don't use this as my main form of communication.

And speaking of technology, have you noticed how much "crap" is on television these days?  My shows have dwindled down to a handful as I've grown further and further away from the uselessness of "reality" TV, which is really not "reality" after all.  People believe this stuff is real life.  While the contestants are real people from all walks of life, they do have a script to follow that guides them in the direction that producers want a show to go in.  This is NOT reality people!  The quality of programming currently on TV is so bad that I can't bring myself to watch, save for a few shows I've been watching for years like Desperate Housewives or The Oprah Winfrey Show.  Even those shows have lost my attention with their lack of interesting topics.  What the average person doesn’t understand is that television shows are not made for the simple fact that the audience might enjoy them.  The reason producers strive for their show to be a hit is so they can sell advertising time and make a buck.  It doesn't matter if the show is of good quality or not.  It just matters that it's entertaining to the masses so the masses will watch.  Well, I don’t want to be a part of the masses anymore, not that anyone thought that I ever really did.

Life changes.  We change.  We grow up.  At least I hope we do.  We came into this world in a natural state of happiness.  As life happens and we begin to identify ourselves with material things, our physical bodies and labels such as nationality, gender or our roles in life, we become weighted down and lose our sense of true self.  We forget who we are as the chaos of life takes over.  In order to find that happiness again, we must get back to our natural state by releasing the labels and becoming more of who we were born to be. 

I'm uncertain if this metamorphosis I'm going through is due to age or simply a want for something more meaningful in my life.  Those who know me know that I'm not your average person.  I never have been.  I feel "stuck" when I'm in one place too long, like I'm not learning anything new.  I have that itch to travel again, to explore and see new places or even ones I've already been to.  I just want to go!  Recently it was suggested to me that I become an intern for an Asian spin-off of a major network television show.  Ironically, it’s a reality show.  Why would I do that when I've already graduated college and should be in the midst of my career?  The more I think about it, the more I want to take this adventure and run with it.  I've always wanted to see Malaysia, the filming location.  I would have easy access to Jakarta and Bali, Indonesia, Singapore and Phuket, Thailand.  This is the opportunity of a lifetime so I'm in research mode as I write this.  I'd love to explore the unknown and publish a book about my personal experiences.  If the reality show doesn’t work out, I’ll be heading to San Juan, Puerto Rico to hang out on the beach for a week with my best friend.  Why not?

This is my life - the adventures of a young woman with the need to live.  I don't want to be a spectator watching life as it passes me by.  There is no better time than now to find the Woman in Me.

The Story of X

Yesterday I was happily deleting files off my computer, which I do now and again to make room for the new, when I hopped on Windows Live Messenger.  I hadn't signed on in months so this was quite unusual for me but out of shear curiosity, I signed in.  I continued away deleting files and programs when up popped a message from an unexpected source.  We'll call him "X".

I've known X since 2004.  He was the keyboard player in the band I was promoting throughout the states.  We were like two peas in a pod, on the road for a month and a half, always chatting and laughing and having a good time.  We walked from the apartment we were staying at in West Hollywood to Tower Records on Sunset Blvd., all the while telling stories and cracking ourselves up.  We often-times shared a room at some dumpy motel in the middle of nowhere as we drove through the desert to get from Los Angeles to our end destination:  Dallas, Texas.  X and I would spend nights talking about everything from past relationships to the perils of the music industry to our current passions and woes.  There wasn't anything we didn't tell each other.  Through our shared experiences on the road we bonded and would develop a lasting friendship.  Many thought there was something more than friendship between us but it never once leaned in that direction.  He was my best friend.

Our friendship continued (or should I say, "survived"?) through the breakup of the band, broken relationships, marriage and divorce, family turmoil, visits from me to his home across the country and an ocean, his visits to me in Los Angeles and much, much more.  But the last time I saw him is a day I knew something was about to change, and not for the better.

It was May of 2008, when X planned a spontaneous trip to LA to visit me for a few days.  The trip was really just an excuse to pick up some music equipment he had ordered through a friend at the Guitar Center in Hollywood.  His friend was providing him a steep discount which made the trip worth his while.

My plan was to hang out with X as much as possible, do some site seeing, go out to dinner and spend time with friends while still handling my daily responsibilities at work.  My friend in my apartment complex offered to pick X up from the airport while I was at my morning job and drop him off at the Guitar Center.  After I got off work from my afternoon job I would drive out to Hollywood to pick him and his equipment up and bring him back to my apartment in Santa Monica.  So off I went, with my roommate in tow, into the midst of rush hour traffic.  If you know anything about LA, you know that it can take you an hour to drive five miles.  I had to drive eight miles.  Needless to say, it took us over an hour but we finally arrived where I was greeted with a giant bear hug.  It was so nice to see X.

We spent the next few days cramming in as much activity as we could in between my jobs.  We had dinner with friends, went shopping, hung out at Universal City Walk and walked around Beverly Hills where we visited my friend Hasty Torres' chocolate shop, Madame Chocolat, which has been featured on such shows as "The Girls Next Door" and "Dr. Phil."  Hasty is an exceptional chocolatier trained by the world famous culinary chef and chocolatier Jacques Torres.  I had dinner with Hasty and Jacques once in Hollywood, the day that the episode of "The Girls Next Door" was filmed at Madame Chocolat which I'll share another time.  We managed to cram so much into the first few days which was great because I became seriously ill a couple of days in that I couldn't do much.  Everywhere we went I had to visit a bathroom every 20 minutes.  I wasn't eating but I was still sick to my stomach.  It was coming out both ends.  This was making it impossible to go anywhere or to enjoy myself.

Even though I was terribly sick, X was visiting and still wanted to do things and I didn't want to disappoint him.  I asked my friends to take him out and show him a good time.  They were good to him but he still pushed for me to come along.  I was getting more frustrated by the day because I felt as though he was being selfish.  I understood that he came a long way but what was I supposed to do, wear a diaper so I could paint the town with him?

I somehow managed to pull myself together on X's final night in town.  We made dinner reservations for us and three other friends at a high-end restaurant famous for its ribs, just up the street from my apartment.  X wanted to take us to dinner as a thank you.  I was feeling resentful but did my best to put those feelings (and my illness) aside so that we could enjoy our last few hours together before I had to take him to the airport.  We had some wine and I ordered the ribs but I really didn't consume much.  I just wasn't up for it.  We all had a great time laughing and eating (me watching them eat) and soon enough it was time to say goodbye.

In the days following X's departure, he called and asked me to pick up one last piece of equipment he had ordered that hadn't come into the store until he was already back home.  I had no time in between trying to take care of my health, my jobs and the other things I had going on.  It's not like in "LA-distance" the store was around the corner.  I was also furious because at this point he didn't even offer to reimburse me for the expenses.  X asked a friend of mine who wasn't working at the time and didn't live far from the Guitar Center to pick up the item and bring it over to me which thankfully he did.  I remember how angry I was the day I mailed the package to him.  The emotions had been brewing for at least a week and a half so it wouldn't be long before they erupted.  When he eventually called, it all came out like a volcano spewing ash.  I do believe that was the last time we spoke until just yesterday when his instant message flashed on my screen to my utter shock.  I'm not saying my behavior was appropriate or acceptable because it was neither.  I've learned a tremendous amount about myself since that time which is why I was so thrilled to see his name pop up on my screen.

We chatted online for an hour yesterday and much was said to heal the wounds of times past. We were very lucky to have found each other that day though I'm not sure I can call it luck.  Maybe divine intervention.  I had been thinking about X a lot, missing his friendship and wondering how he was doing.  Ironically, I had come across many of the photos we've taken over the years while I'd been sorting through the files on my computer.

And then there were his recent experiences.  X told me that the night before he had had a dream about me, that I was crying and he was there to wipe away my tears.  When he woke up he couldn't stop thinking about me all day.  He decided to sign onto Messenger which he said he hadn't done in months and there I was.  Hmmm... makes you wonder why things happen the way they do.  But who am I to question how God works?  I'm just grateful to have my friend back in my life.  And you know what?  It was exactly how it always was between us: natural.

This story is a prime example of forgiveness (for both of us) and gratitude.  I am forever grateful to understand the true meaning of forgiveness and the ability to let go.  Often times we waste so much of our energy being hurt or angry over something so minor that we miss out on valuable time with our loved ones.  What a spectacular lesson!