Embellishment

So I’m again in Boston walking out of an energy efficiency meeting and, rounding the corner, I notice my car is missing!

A friendly man in the car behind where mine would have been opens his window and says my car had just been towed down the street a few moments ago. After attempting to get sympathy from others still lingering in the meeting space, and perhaps some advice, I trek all over the financial district and finally find the police station. The dispatcher informs me of my lovely $105 towing bill and advises me to catch a cab to South Boston. The cabbie drops F-bombs like nobody’s business, ranting and raving about all the governmental crooks, the challenges of stopping to pee and stay in business with all the new laws, and about his son’s $300,000 divorce. He’s very entertaining and takes my mind off my extremely sore feet (only losers wear comfort shoes in Boston). He tells me to go in and pay and he’ll wait right there for me. I’m on to his attempt at racking up more time on the meter and pay him, the $75 ticket on my windshield, and the lovely towing bill. 

I’m 90 minutes behind schedule to meet my sister for dinner. She graciously tells me to order anything on the menu and that dinner is her treat. We have some tough stuff to discuss because in addition to the ongoing challenges we face – like every living being on the planet these days – we plan on talking about how we talk. In every conversation there are those with an ease for embellishment and those who lean toward listening. I tend to be the listener and my sister has the ease of embellishment. I share with her my respect for her talent and ask her to help me better express myself verbally. It gets emotional. Experiences of being verbally oppressed surface and crash like waves. So, after three hours of heartfelt talking it is time to go. I have a 7am “meeting” the next day. 

Wednesday mornings are special. I rise a bit earlier than usual and drive into town, climb up to a second floor sanctuary of peaceful energy and (often) bright sunshine streaming through the tall windows onto the expansive hard wood floor where my sangha sits to meditate. Every week I know this group is sitting still, breathing deep, practicing the way of awareness. And it is fulfilling beyond words to know that they and many others throughout the world are noticing life as it unfolds in these moments. 

It is in this environment that I regularly reflect on my ability to communicate. 

Although I have been building my ability to express myself through journaling for many years, verbal expression still feels like an art in which I remain a novice. My heart doesn’t start racing and my stomach doesn’t get into a knot when I sit down with an Inner Fortune journal (or a blank sheet of paper). Yet when I attempt to express myself about important things, even in the safe space of my Wednesday morning meditation group or across the table from a sister who loves me, my body frequently becomes possessed with these fear-based responses.

I push through these responses and, because we have just read Thich Naht Hahn’s 9th mindfulness training, decide it is appropriate to share my story of talking about talking with my sister last night. I add the bit about the cabbie and my car being towed because it’s funny and interesting, but I also add that my sister and I closed the restaurant. We didn’t. Yes, we were the last of maybe a dozen in the bar section of the restaurant, but I notice my truth-stretching and experience a sense of dishonesty as well as gentleness toward myself. I’m practicing the way of awareness and practice makes perfect. I notice an inner struggle to let myself off the hook for what feels like a lie but perhaps is simply an innocent embellishment. I vow then and there to remind myself regularly that we are all perfectly imperfect and that this is what makes life so interesting.