style="font-size:15px;"> Angie asked her about some of the places she had hiked. “When else do you feel blissed like that?” She leaned forward as if listening Emily into speech.
“Strange as it seems, I also used to feel blissed when I volunteered to help the kids at the homeless shelter near where I live do their math homework. I never thought of that as blissed until this moment, but it was just the same feeling as I have when hiking.”
I nodded and asked Dave to replay the video of that conversation without sound. I invited the rest of the group to call out what they noticed. At first, we were all quiet, but, after a few minutes, people started to laugh. Mary Jane commented that it looked as if Emily lit up. A man next to me said that Emily had become completely energized and enlivened talking about the kids. Everyone else nodded in agreement. Dave replayed it one more time with the sound turned on. Sure enough, as soon as Emily started to talk about helping the kids, her back straightened, something akin to a grin crept across her face, and both hands conducted her words like musical notes. In short, she lit up.
We spent the rest of the evening with everyone in the group interviewing one another while Dave circulated with the video camera. People then got to see themselves answering the questions and discovering what made them light up.
As we were about to close the session, I wrote the following formula on the flip chart in the front of the room: P = pd+b+b-I, and then explained, “In Emily’s honor I improvised this formula that I learned from author Timothy Gallwey. The big ‘P’ stands for the Promise Life made to the world the moment you were born. The little ‘pd’ stands for what makes you feel pissed off about the disrespect around you; ‘b’ is for the blessings in your life, and the second ‘b’ is for what you do that makes you feel blissed. Does anyone want to guess what the ‘I’ represents?”
Emily’s open hand waved in the air and she immediately called out, “I read Galway too! ‘I’ is for interference! The external and internal ways all of that potential gets interfered with.”
I reached out, opening my palm to slap hers, and said, “What I realized when I walked in solitude this afternoon is that telling the stories that have yeasted me and braiding them together so I can help others realize their potential fulfills the Promise of my life. Like you, I’ve interfered with it by closing my mind to the possibility that it could be relevant or useful. Many thanks for the lesson, Emily!”
In two days’ time, the World Trade Center was destroyed, and each of us realized just how relevant our learning could be.
How Do I Call When I Want the Promise to Answer?
I am in trouble at school again. The teacher tells my mother that I keep staring out the window and won’t pay attention. I have no idea what she’s talking about. Daddy pays tolls when he crosses the George Washington Bridge, but I’ve never seen anyone paying attention. To tell the truth, I don’t even really know what attention is, but everyone wants some from me. As I click the front door to her apartment shut behind me, I decide to ask Grandma. She’s standing in front of the old oak bureau in her bedroom. While I tell her about what the teacher said, she brushes her hair. It’s like a dense cloud of white silk and has never been cut in her entire life.
The only thing on top of the bureau is a small carved camphorwood box. She places her brush down next to the silver hand mirror my father gave her and puts the box in her palm, saying, “Your mind, like this box, can both open and close. Your attention makes both possible.”
She stretches the box out to me, and I pry the lid open very carefully with my thumbnail. Inside, there is a musty smell and a handful of dirt.
“Where does it come from, Grandma?”
“Home.”
I look around the apartment, but she shakes her head. Then I figure out that she must mean Russia, the old country. “What’s it for?”
She takes a pinch of the dirt between her fingers and sifts it back into the box. Her voice gets cobwebby as she answers, “When Grandpa and I fled from the old country, I had to leave so much behind, even my first two children and my brother. So I put a handful of home inside this little box to carry with me. We were on a boat crossing the ocean for so very long, but when we finally got off and I stepped onto Ellis Island, the first thing I did was to put a pinch of that dirt down beneath my feet. That made the foreign ground home. I had never seen an ocean before I got on that boat.” She wrapped her thin arms around me and rocked back and forth as she continued, “It was so wide and so deep, Ketzaleh. Who could imagine such a thing existed beyond the potato fields? I watched it day after day. Once, I even tasted it on my tongue. It was salty just like tears. Finally I decided that a person’s mind is just like that ocean. Some thoughts float and splash like waves on the surface, some things sink and go all the way down, deep, deep, down to the very bottom.”
“But Grandma, if something falls into the ocean and sinks down that far, can you ever find it?”
Her explanation comes very slowly. “That’s what your attention is for, Ketzaleh. Thoughts can splash noisily here and there on the top, pulled by whatever grabs them. But if you just let them sink down a little way, they float around. People call that daydreaming. At the very bottom of your mind, your attention is wide and silent.”
“Grandma, that’s just what happens to me in school when I stare out the window instead of practicing my multiplication tables! But why does my teacher say attention is something you have to pay, like when you cross the George Washington Bridge?”
She holds my hand ever so gently and leads me into the kitchen, where she fills up the big glass bread bowl with water. “Attention is the simplest kind of love, my darling. Maybe your teacher has forgotten how to float down into the heart of her own mind. A lot of grown-ups do. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll drown in all the feelings she’s dropped down there. I don’t know why people say you have to ‘pay,’ Ketzaleh. Maybe it’s because as your attention takes you down, down, down, it’s like crossing a bridge into a different world.”
“But what happens at the bottom of the ocean of your mind? What’s down there?”
“Oh, my darling, there are things called memories and feelings and possibilities and dreams and ideas, and even stories. Everything you’ve ever learned is down there, even if you don’t remember it when you are splashing up on the surface. And guess what? You can find the Promise down there. Some people call it your soul or spirit or wisdom. To me, it’s the Promise.”
Looking into her eyes, I can see it all in the ocean of my mind.
“And your attention will make your thinking very different down there. You don’t have to hold on to anything. You float around, and your mind opens to the whole, wide floor where everything falls eventually. The waves of thinking splash above you, but it is totally silent down there.”
I actually feel as if I’m floating while I watch her open the camphorwood box and listen to her whisper, “Boxes, hearts, and minds can be opened or closed. They’re capable of both, yes?” It takes me a moment to think about what she’s just said. “Let your attention open as wide as a wing. You may hear songs or see swimmy pictures or get ideas down there. Maybe you’ll come back up with an answer to a question you’ve been wondering about for a long time, or maybe a bigger way of knowing something will just pop up on the surface with you. Maybe you’ll just feel easier with a question that’s been bothering you.”
“Grandma,
