Today culminated with a resounding reminder and notion: Ask and Ye Shall Receive.
It’s not a novel concept. Even as I write it, the old hymn from church lulls me back to the days when I loved singing in church. I could be loud and still unseen, lingering in a place where no wrong and no right exist. “Ask, and it shall be given unto you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you…”
Ehehm. I remind myself I’m not in church anymore and I’ve long since put my Catholicism in a shoe box in a larger box in an attic or basement shelf. Still, minus the goddiness of the flashback musical, the reminder calms me. Cogs that had been grinding and getting stuck are now churning with their counterparts effortlessly. (Like that transition period from a stressful day at work to a warm embrace with your partner and the notion that this is what life is about. Or watching a child (or cat) play with sunlight dancing on the floor. And your brain shifts out of the overstressed, poorly greased life-is-complicated gear into the silent hum of autopilot and life-is-simple.)
Calm, I think back over the past few months as I’ve practiced the art of asking for what I want. (Be it a home made dinner, a quiet night alone, for you to listen or for you to shut up.) And how uncanny it is that my success rate of getting what I wanted shot through the roof.
Think of it like being a passenger in a car. You can either sit quietly in the back seat and just hope the driver goes where you want them to. Or you can call shot gun and do a little “front-seat” driving by asking the driver to take you where you want to go. Yes, they can still say no (and likely will if you insist on telling them exactly how to drive vs where to drive). But your chances just got a heck of a lot better than when you weren’t saying anything at all. And you can be your own driver. I imagine being Joan Didion as Maria, driving fast in my convertible down the freeway and feel my lungs expanding to take in the fantastic freedom and exhale both serenity and anticipation (a delicious cocktail).
So when (and how) did I fall out of the practice/convertible’s front seat without knowing it?
Damn, it feels good to be a gansta. (I’m really digging this driving a convertible feeling!) It’s not that I don’t want to spend hours/days/weeks trying to figure out why I’m afraid or forgot the art of asking. I just don’t want to clutter the moment. (And, until I thought about it, I was happy to not have the hymn still stuck in my head. “Damn, it feels good to be a gansta…..
