Inspired !

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February 23rd 2009

Published: February 24th 2009

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TomarElSol

where are you from?

The Speech of a Boomerang

On my last morning in Mazunte, I had breakfast on the beach, gratefully thanking my stomach for allowing me my new favorite dish of fruit and yogurt. I just can't get over how much I like fruit and yogurt these days, I can have it every meal. I was trying to remind myself of my writings the previous night, reassuring myself over and over that I was very happy to be alone on the beach, preparing to head into the mountains. Only, I was having some difficulty feeling quite as motivated as I had in the night. I checked into livejournal, something I haven't done probably since I left the country. And there I found a recent entry from the one and only Kirsten, one in which she was tackling similar ideas and questions to myself, and smack-dab in the middle of her post was this:

"I got a postcard from the beautiful, spanish-learning princess of Oaxaca, Kaitlin, about a week ago and I've been avoiding it. Maybe she didn't intend for it to be this way, but i found it gently confrontational and it made me nervous. Why? Because she is

i'm a blue one..can you guess which?

right. At the very end she wrote, 'it's time for the youthful, the compassionate, the strong-hearted and well-spoken to place a happy weight upon their shoulders.' And to me it means that it's time for me to step into the role I am well-suited for and create a place where human beings can heal and, in their own way, know god."

I've been annoyed with the mail, since it takes weeks for my postcards to reach the states, but wow, the timing on this one couldn't have been more perfect.

I wrote that? I said that to her? I recalled the moment, my first days in Oaxaca City, feeling overly inspired and appropriately confident in myself and my friends. I had been talking about Kirsten and how she has inspired me greatly, and her brilliant plans for building a non-profit community center in the future. I knew I had to reach out to her, let her know how much I support her vision and her incalculable capabilities. And yet it reached her in a time where she (and with this I can only assume) felt similar to how I have been feeling lately. When your

P1020084

own immense abilities stare you in the face and ask you to grow up far more than you are prepared to at the time and your knee-jerk reaction is to metaphorically crawl up in a little ball and hide out for awhile. Any attempts to push you in a direction other than that of a ball are simply unwelcomed for the time being. The problem is, being a person of such absolute and unavoidable potential, as Kirsten is, there are going to be many of those unwelcomed attempts to push you out of the ball. Because people like Kirsten are magnets, they attract people who desire the world and see it within the Kirstens. They won't stand for balls. And they send postcards.

For a moment I considered taking more precaution in throwing my motivational speeches around, noting that it's necessary to take into perspective that they are not always well-received. But I threw that notion out the window today, realizing that I can't predict such things and that just maybe the inspiration is bound to come full circle, and could be destined to reach me again in a time when I'm feeling sorry for myself.

My memory

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from that morning, writing that post card from a distant location three weeks past, reached out to my future self sitting on the beach, and gave out this gentle and forceful reminder: This is a "happy weight" upon your shoulders. And the circle became full thanks to a moment of reckless ambition and the greatness of Kirsten.

After reading her post I stood up feeling stronger than when I had taken my seat and I had a huge smile stuck to my face, one I knew well but hadn't carried so proudly in over a month.