it is meant to be.......

There are many overused phrases in our lexicon. They usually start out with a feeling of original authenticity, and then somehow end up sounding insincere and trite. Or sometimes they get picked up in the world of verbal verbosity and repackaged so that they can be lobbed out as something completely different than what it was supposed to mean. We have a tendancy to do that. It's like we're too busy to find our own words, our own way of saying something which leads us to resort to canned goods...... It's like the difference between a homemade meal and a frozen dinner. The packaging is always more pleasing to the eye than the taste will ever be.

Sometimes words just don't cut it. Sometimes they get in the way of genuine feelings that for some reason don't have the right words to convey the depth and width of how one really feels. They also have a tendancy to fill in the important silence as a way to add a glossing over in order to kill the discomfort which is needed when truth is rearing it's ugly head. Words help us hide behind the intellectualization method of coping. In order to avoid our own fears of feeling too darn much, we will use our words, particularly the canned goods cliches to put a cork in it.

But............yes, there's a but.......sometimes the words fit JUST right.

How often do you stumble across an event or someone else's path which seems to have no clear rhyme nor reason to it happening? You can bang your head over and over in the pursuit of trying to make sense of it, or you can just simply accept it as a blessing. I feel like I've been inundated with such experiences over the last couple of years.

Luckily most of the situations which find me in awe of the whys and wherefores have been positively life affirming. What comes to mind right away are the new friendships I have experienced in the virtual reality of this medium. I have found myself many many times asking the same kind of questions........... How has this happened? What is the meaning behind the connections? What have I done to deserve this? Logic doesn't seem to be a part of the equation. The probabilities are too miniscule.

The most profound path crossing occured a year and a half ago when I first began reading Pip's blog. Interestingly, the navel gazing questions never materialized. Instead, I automatically moved into an overwhelming sensation that I was meant to meet him. "We are meant to meet" became my mantra whenever we swapped emails, whenever he would send me loving encouragement to keep being the authentic "Me".......... whenever I listened to the music he posted on his site.

So many times when I have read something Pip has written, about the world he lives and works in and how it has touched him deeply, I could automatically relate to the thoughts and feelings he was expressing. His world, though it is across the big pond has many similarities to mine. I knew he would understand my stories at a level some couldn't. And, like many others I'm sure, there are times when I read his blog and feel that the message has been written just for ourselves to find and to absorb, particularly the ones that connect to faith. I could feel his messages seep into the way I looked at the world and the way I looked at me.

I boldly told my emerald friend, Mr. Pip....."we are meant to meet."


It is meant to be......this silly bunch of words make me smile........because they are TRUE. And you know what? My writing evolved and grew deeper and more satisfying because I knew that there was someone out there who was cheering me on.......this beautiful friend I am meant to meet. Words, phrases.........reading material fed my thinking which encouraged to stretch beyond my borders.


So............it turns out that this destiny meant to be thing? It took a different turn. Initially I tried to find a way to arrange for Pip to deliver his workshops in Canada at a conference last year for Career Counsellors. It didn't pan out the way I had hoped. However, I do believe I may still be the Canadian agent, and will continue to work on this happening. :) This winter, though, my thinking went from conversations that started with "If we meet........" to "when we meet....." and I could FEEL my yearning to spend time with my friend.............to talk live face to face..........to share in person. After the sudden death of John O'Donahue, a profoundly beautiful man and a friend of Pip's whom I have never met but whose words and poetry touched me deeply, I decided right then and there that I was going to make it happen.


Life is too short and too unpredictable not to make a leap to make things happen. Life broadens and blooms in ways that are also unpredictable when one makes things happen. As Father O'Donahue stated in one of his talks when he was quoting a man he was with near the end of this man's life............"you've got to grab hold of life and SQUEEZE hard." Right on! (Click here and it will take you to a site where you can read some beautiful words about a man who died way too young, and see part of his talk at the Greenbelt festival last year).


It is meant to be and it's going to happen in May. Life is meant to be SQUEEZED. Life is meant to be lived fully. You don't want to get to the end of it with one item on your list, right?


I am very excited about my trip............about spending time with Pip and Joan, just hanging out sipping that Cointreau, and talking into the wee hours of the night. Just normal friendship "getting to know you" stuff. Though our friendship began in an unusually modern manner, it has given us the avenue to find our way into one another's lives. It makes me wonder..........if it is was meant to be, how would it have happened without the world of blogging?



And you know what is making it even more wonderful? Since I decided to make it happen, other connections are going to happen too. Beautiful Guernsey Girl Katie is flying in to spend two FUN days with me in London! YES! And it's happening because our meeting is meant to be too. I have a feeling we'll be just as chatty in person as we are online.


When it's right, it feels just right. These are some of those SQUEEZING life times and it's all because they are meant to be. No other explanations are needed. Well, except I have a sense we'll get past the "meant to be" and slip into the essence of why. It'll be found beneath the words in a level 5 place where shared emotions abound.

loveitloveitloveit..... :)