14: From Tel Aviv, Birthday Edition

Shalom, chaverim ikarim! (Hello, dear friends!)

In case your Facebook, gCal, iContacts, or whatever didn’t catch you up, today is my birthday. And birthdays are one of the three times a year I like to step back and take stock at something akin to a birds’ eye view. This year, there’s a lot to see. 

My heart grew softer and more tender. I became a yoga teacher and reconnected with my body as an aspect of and tool for my developing freedom. I sat and listened to the wiser, much quieter, voice inside my head and heard that it really was time to shake up the life I’d been living in the US. I cried, for the first time in 3 years or so. I felt sad at leaving, and excited about adventuring, and afraid of not knowing where I was going. I faced my fears of leaving without slamming my face onto the floor and getting a concussion. I began to write. I read. I took planes and buses and trains and cars and boats and hot air balloons over four continents. I found old traumas hidden in boxes in my heart and in cellars in my mind. I’ve opened the windows of my mind-body and there’s air flowing inside. The must is beginning to fade. 

I’ve become more patient, especially with myself. I am learning to hold softly the need to know where I am going, to surrender into the experience of being lost, and discovering that in that surrender I find myself in the present moment, in the relationships I have with the people around me. I have learned that I carry you, my friends, with me always. I have seen ripples of my actions and my words. I have gained confidence in the wisdom of stillness and commitment to the present. I have missed my family, my friends, the comfort of a bed I call my own. I have nearly shat my pants, literally. I have been bored. I have judged others and how they travel, and judged myself for falling short of my ideals. I have become better at catching my self judgment and being gentle. I have a long way to go.

I hope this year to come brings me greater wisdom and wholeness. I hope it brings even more love and joy, more dancing and singing and colors and delicious food shared with friends old and new. I hope it holds adventures inner and outer, and that it ushers in a season of building. It feels like the time is ripe for building, though I have neither blueprints nor concept drawings. Loosely, I want to help others discover their innate wisdom (educating, loosely and Socratically understood)  to build (or find) communities committed to wisdom and love, and to tell stories that usher hope and elicit compassion. If you have ideas of how/where to do that after June, I’d love to hear them. 

In the meantime, there’s a place near the apartment where I’m staying where I can do yoga and take dance lessons, and my Ulpan (intensive Hebrew school) begins tomorrow. Yesterday I went for a seaside sunset run. Tonight I’m hosting a dinner party for people I don’t know (friends of friends) in the hopes that they become new friends. The food will be delicious, and I expect the company will be delightful. And you’ll be there in spirit, if not in body.

With birthday love,

Rafa