Feeling Zen

It’s not a secret to most people that I graduated from high school five months pregnant. The lesser known fact, which is just rich with irony, is the fact that I will be attending my ten year high school reunion (drum roll please)…five months pregnant. I really just added this up today with an old girlfriend of mine from high school as we finished taping some boxes shut and headed out for lunch. I will see all the people I graduated from high school with in the exact same condition I was in the last time I saw them. The humor is not lost on me.

As Monica of Friends said when she ran into an old flame with a pair of pantyhose and lacey underwear clung by static to the back side of her coat, “God knew I was going to see you tonight and saw an opportunity.”

Life really is more humorous than we give it credit for—or maybe it’s that most of the humor we encounter involves our own pride and self-image and we are not willing to laugh at the truly humorous. Its unquestionable to me that God has a sense of humor. If we were willing to laugh at ourselves more, we could be on the inside of some of her most divine comedy gold. But we just take ourselves so seriously, don’t we?

I experienced the most harmonious synchronicity this morning in my car. It was like a string of harmonious events in one car ride that left me with the biggest smile I’ve had on my face driving maybe ever—usually driving makes me crabby.

All I did to invite this synchronicity was to slow down. I wasn’t in a rush on my way home from lunch—in fact I wanted my daughter to fall asleep in the car so I saw driving intentionally slowly (have you ever noticed you can’t really lengthen a trip even when you drive ten miles an hour?) So instead of rushing in front of the guy who was waiting to pull out of the gas station to make sure I made my light on Nicolette Ave, I slowed way down and waved him into the intersection. He happened to have a gap coming the other way and was able to make his left turn (no small task on Nicolette). Instead of giving me the Minnesota polite one-hand “how” wave, he pointed at me directly, I mean right between the eyes and gave me a thumbs-up. It caught me so off-guard that I grinned in spite of myself.

I felt so good after that that I stopped to let a mother and her three small girls cross even though they weren’t quite to the corner and needed an extra moment to gather together and grab hands. The mother gave me an appreciative nod and exhausted smile as she towed her little herd to the safety of the other side. The littlest duckling-of-a-curly-headed girl grinned and waved her appreciation.

Then just blocks from home, feeling rather Zen and harmonious with my environment, my community, I paused for a tough looking youth with ipod buds in his ears and a cell phone in his hand—madly texting, he barely seemed aware of my presence but knew instinctively to stop and wait—trying to cross Chicago Ave can take all afternoon any of us neighborhood folks know. But I stopped too and just waited. It took him a minute to catch on and when he did he strolled out seeming very blasé about the whole thing. But just when he was almost passed my car, he glanced up and flashed me a peace sign. It was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes.

This experience is the only explanation I can give for why I feel great today. I am not stressed even though we move in one day. I feel good and happy and peaceful. I’m smiling a lot and enjoying even the fact that I am typing in the middle of a pile of boxes and dismantled furniture. The last thing to leave this house will be my laptop and our lone wireless router. I feel like working on my short story right now. Julia Cameron would say I should do my three pages now, even before I finish packing. Well, we’ll see.