The Power to Act

Yummy, that’s what the instructor said that experiences could be. His words hit me with the force of a well placed Tae Kwon Do kick. I was stunned. I’ve never connected life’s experiences with the word yummy! I’m still not sure what to make of it. What I do know is that his words keep coming back to me when I least expect it. Like an uninvited guest that demands attention, his words erupt into my psyche. Over the years I’ve learned to pay attention to what my mind relentlessly puts in front of me.

It was at a training last weekend and we were studying the Pearl; an essential essence that is at the core of all human beings. It is part of who we are when we come into the world, but we lose connection with it as we traverse the mountain called childhood. Things such as joy, trust, lightness and a sense of adventure or an assuredness of being okay in the world, are unconsciously give up for security and parental approval.  Pearly essence is foundational to our personal presence and is connected with how we were nurtured as a child. When I heard that we were going to work with the Pearl, I knew I was in the right place because I grew up feeling that I was not enough.  Is there a connection between how I was nurtured and how I experience life today?

When I think of my sixty plus years and all of the experiences I’ve had over the decades, I can honestly say that I never, not ever, equated life’s experiences as an opportunity to nourish myself let alone be yummy. I experience life as something to move through, to accomplish, to understand and, on my best days,  to enjoy. Life has been a serious business. Sure there have been nurturing experiences such as being in nature, sunrises and sunsets or being at the ocean watching the waves lap the shore. I plan a trip to the ocean and while there I find that my metaphorical batteries have been recharge; the sea and the sand and the rhythm of the ocean provides sustenance.  Like the sunny days I seek, I’m warming up to the idea.  I see the connection between my desire to jettison the heavy winter coat of seriousness and replace it with a gauzy sun dress of lightness. Yes the warmth of the sun on my bare shoulders can be a yummy experience, but what I heard was that all experiences can be both nourishing and yummy. That boggles my mind. How could that be?

When I think of life’s experiences as nourishing and yummy, an image of a lavish banquet laid out in front of me appears and then his words begin to make sense. As I hold the image of my gourmet banquet in my mind’s eye, I start to salivate.  Isn’t that the natural response to yummy? I can see myself choosing food (experiences) that are good for my body like apples, almonds and grilled fish or running right over to get a big Mac quarter pounder with fries and a chocolate milk shake.  I never choose to eat at fast food establishments but I do have a sweet tooth that satiates my need for yummy but does not provide nourishment.  I’ll choose a love story over a horror movie or walk the stairs rather than taking an escalator, but what about the times when I experience things that I didn’t choose; things that could never be considered as nurturing or ‘yummy?’

What about the eighteen months of hell that I experienced when my first husband and father died within four months of each other, I had back surgery and lost my job. Or the years I spent learning to live as a single person again. Let me assure you that I did not experience it as nourishing or yummy. Devastating and gruesome would better describe those first years of  transition. Or were there experiences of nourishment in the midst of the devastation?  It was in that wasteland of grief and anger that I reached back to reconnect with the God of my youth and found cool clear water to nourish my parched soul. There were also family, friends and co-workers whose open hearts and reassuring words were like manna in the desert, they nourished me.  Like Moses leading the Israelite s out of the desert to the promise land, I felt lead toward sanity, health and most importantly, to hope again. But would I call these experiences yummy?

So what are the common denominators between the very different types of experiences? The common denominator is me and the choices that I make.  Not just in the experiences that I choose, but in how I choose to live the experiences that I’m given.  What if all experiences could provide nourishment and I could find the Pearl of ‘yummy’ within each of them?

A dear friend of mine died from brain cancer at fifty-five years young.  Once she knew that her time was short and she grieved her eminent death, she accepted the reality and went on to live life as a banquet. From her wheel chair with her beret jauntily sitting on her bald head, we went to great restaurants where she drank her wine from a straw and we ordered rich lavish deserts as the first course of our meal.  Lou learned to truly experience the banquet of life as ‘yummy.’ She greedily took in every experience from a place of choice.  She spent time with her loved ones and choose only things that delighted and nourished her. With others she choose not to invest her limited resources. What a sweet gift to recall her life and how the memory of her choosing life is nourishing me right now. In her life, and more importantly in how she dealt with death, I understand what my teacher was saying.

When difficult experiences come my way, I can choose ‘yummy’ by using the lemons in front of me to make lemonade. I can learn to enjoy the nourishment that is available in all of life’s experiences by realizing that nourishment can come in the form of broccoli and Brussels sprouts or from the Cod fish I detest.  When I equate yummy with only things that delight my palate and rejects nourishment from the unsavory, then am starving myself? I cannot choose all of my life’s situations but I can choose how to experience them. It’s in the choice that nourishment and ‘yummy’ resides. I’m not saying that the choosing will be easy, but when I understand that I do have a choice in how I respond, then and only then, will I find nourishment in any experience and that level of personal power is truly ‘yummy.’

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