Today I turn 50.
I was looking back at things I've done. Soooooo many things. Simple things like learning the alphabet, or discovering how to tie my shoes. Or the excitement of my first drive across the Big Old USA.
It's the experiences that are my treasures. They feel alive to me more than anything I own. I remember as kids walking out on the ice of Lake Erie with my sister. We went so far that we couldn't even see the beach. It was so quiet.
The experiences of our lives stay with us. They show up when they feel like it. I like to think of them as a bird showing up outside my window. Yesterday I saw a cardinal on a tree branch. The red was such a bright contrast from the greys and brown of the last days of winter. Just like the cardinal, my memories show up, uncalled for, and surprise me.
I just remembered sitting in the back of a school bus when I was a kid. I thought about a map on my bedroom wall of the planets in space. An intuition came in and said, "There can't be an end to space. Otherwise there would be a big wall, and things being what they are, there would have to be something on the other side. Space goes on forever." I loved how that feeling resonated in my chest.
Sometimes my client's feel that when they get rid of something, they will forget the memories that they associate with the thing. But then that thing sits there unnoticed most of the time. It doesn't help the memories. They can't be trapped and put on display. That's because memories are living things. They are an energy. Watch and notice that they come without asking. Notice their aliveness.
I remember my cat Smokey. He used to sit on my chest and purr for no reason. I could feel his purrs vibrate my rib cage.