Rules of the Road

I am a rule breaker. This is where I come alive, where the lines are drawn and I dance upon them and then sprightly waltz over them, creating mere dust in the sand where the line once was. I didn’t know this about myself for a long time, and then a long time friend said to me once, in awe, in surprise, “The rules simply aren’t there for you are they? I mean, you just don’t see them.” And at this I had to think, and I realized she was right. I really did not see them, rules meant nothing to me, and her comment made me aware; aware that I was different, that the rules that a lot of other people saw and obeyed quite simply, only made me puzzled, and made me question why people were so enamored of their rules.

And so, this is my disclaimer: I may break some rules, it is what I do.
Oh not that I don’t have any rules in my head, I have a lot of those ‘bad’ rules that parents and adults drum into children’s heads. Children should be seen and not heard, don’t tell the neighbors…. Damnable and damaging secrets and lies that forbid us to talk about our real lives. Don’t tell the whole truth. This rule too, I try to break, if only in my writing, as I try not to be too real in polite company, as it can make people uncomfortable. Teacher and writer Floyd Salas, says, "All considerations of language, of ideas, of symbols and metaphors serve only one function: to convey the soul of a living being to the soul of other living beings and in that process break us out of our isolation and loneliness and put us in touch with the universal spirit."

This boils down what I hope is my function, in life, as a writer, as a therapist—
to convey my living soul to others, to connect with others and to connect with the universal spirit. This sense of connection, of belongingness, is often overlooked as the huge motivator that it is. We all bumble along, hoping for a sense of connection in life, when things are out of whack, some people shop, for stuff, maybe, but maybe for the connection, to be in a mall, to talk to a clerk, to imagine that they are important, buying things from someone who is there, to serve them.

So, how do we create connections that move us forward, that bring us closer, tighter in to this universal spirit? How do we move in sacred steps, so that even when we back away from the spirit, we are still close in? How do we create sacred spaces that invite others in closer to us and closer to the spirit where healing occurs? One of the ways this works for me is through words, reading words on a page, speaking words aloud, finding words and phrases that invite and heal. The hard part for me is to use the academic words, use ways of using words that are required, expected, codified. As if the words that ask questions that can be quantified, are more real, more valid, more scientific. I know better, though, I know that words of wisdom will not be counted, will not be verified by numbers, but by the souls that ring out, by the vibrations that run through the body when the truth hits the heart and the heart sings and says, “I knew this all along, this is truth, this I carry within me. This connects us and this is love.”