Timely Reunion

Develop interest in life as you see it, in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. - Henry Miller in the Zen Calendar (June 5, 2002).

Day 171. When Henry Miller uttered that quote, I bet he was having an evening like I just did.

I have been 24 hours in the company of the friend I was reunited with (after 32 years) in April of this year. The one I met when I was 10. It is astonishing to reconnect with her: our compatibility is so complete, our dispositions so attuned, our history so colorful, our temperaments so well suited. We are not cheesy and smarmy and perfect. She is frothy and opinionated and blunt. She has also led a remarkable life effervesced with music, travel, art and a collection of eclectic, eccentric characters for friends. Interestingly, she led the life I suspect I would have indulged had I refrained from parenthood.

The universe led us back to one another at precisely the right time. She is gasping for breath, suffocating under the onerous wet blanket of life in small town Oklahoma while she carves out the first year of marriage with a man she truly loves. Recently liberated from my own soul crushing relationship and my son's convenient change of residence, I am available to rekindle her lively spirit and fan the flame of her true nature. Together, we are shooting sparks from smoldering embers. We light one another up. The desolation and deprivation characterizing our lives before reconnecting infuses our reunion with magic. And gratitude. As she whispered in my year that evening in April when we embraced for the first time in over three decades, "Sheer joy."

I remain astounded at the graciousness of the universe and her ability to fill me up in exact proportion to the emptiness I create. It is the most sublime of all equations (this coming from a person who can calculate standard deviations by hand!) Of the gifts offered by my practice to date, this one is paramount: I need not flounder in exertions to fulfill my innermost needs. When I quiet my mind and open my heart, fulfillment finds its way to me.

Gassho,

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