Best of You

I’m sitting in the Honolulu airport on the first day of a surprise vacation. I’m spending a week in Hawaii because I felt it pulling on my soul so I took off since I could. I do very much appreciate this life I live that allows me to make last minute travel plans like this.

I brought my travel journal with me that I started in Bali and read through it on the flight over. It’s been three months since I returned from that trip. Looking back over these past few months I am able to see that I experienced at home the things I was hoping to gain in India before I left early. I saw the Dalai Lama and listened to him talk about compassion, developed a better meditation practice, became more experienced in yoga by teaching it, made new connections, and improved my personal relationships, became clearer about my life goals, played and recorded music, and found a light to spark a fire inside of me.

Fire.

I attended a meditation session on Monday night at the Ananda Mediation Center that I’ve driven past a thousand times. I had been curious about it for years and finally I told myself, GO. Today. Glad I did. A man named Turiya lead us through a guided mediation that seemed to fly by. I found it to be calming and easy to focus on. Then he gave a talk on the topic of “service” that nicely hit home. He went off on some kind of tangent about looking at a person’s best potential and believing in it when you look at them as a way to build positivity and compassion. As an idealist I do this, and I believe it is part of my personality and a big part of the work I do. However it has not always served me well, because of the consequence of disappointment. So at the end when he asked if there were any questions I raised my hand and asked, “wouldn’t seeing people in their best potential eventually lead to disappointment when they don’t live up to it or do something to let you down?”

Turiya’s response was something like this...

It is their choice to walk through the door. You have no control over whether someone else is living their best. Often people do not because they are not ready to or because they have something they need to learn. You only have control over yourself and your actions. Just do your part and do your best to believe in someone’s greatest potential without expectation or attachment. It exists even if they are doing things that go against it. All you can do is your part. It is their choice to walk through the door.

Alright, I get it........

And now I am in Hilo, and very amused that my brother has a beard and looks like Dave Grohl.