Saturday, 29. December 2007, 01:55:08
Haven't posted for a few days. Busy traveling around visiting friends and family. So nice to have a reliable car now that I can feel safe driving in the winter. The best thing? It has heat. Was getting a little weary of scraping the ice off the inside of the windshield. No, seriously! I had planned on going to that meditation retreat again but I decided instead to visit family and friends. And practice driving my new car of course. Which, is getting better all the time!
Haven't been feeling well the past few days either. It started three days ago, but I ignored it, thinking that maybe I just ate too much at Xmas dinner. Well, it hit me full force last night, and today I have spent most of the day in bed, sipping on ginger tea. I dunno, just picked up a bug somewhere along the way. Good way to start the New Year's diet!
Yesterday, driving back from a friend's I stopped in a city along the way. They have a great swimming pool there which had been built for the Canada Games a few years back. I thought maybe a swim might relieve my achy muscles and tiredness. Maybe revive me somehow. Anyway, I was swimming along, doing not too badly, but feeling a bit tired. I stopped for a bit of a rest. Then I hear, "Sandy...Sandy, is that you? You haven't changed a bit!" I look over to the next lane and there is this tall elegant woman. I recognize her instantly, a classmate from high school. She was in the "in" crowd back then. Me, I was a bit of a social outcast, but I was used to it, giving up totally on trying to be included in "their" silly games. I remember she was pretty nice though, but still one of the popular ones. We chatted a bit, exchanging info about our jobs, lives etc. She wondered if I had kept in touch with anyone from high school. I had not. Neither had she. She then asked if I was planning on attending the next reunion...which would be , gasp 30 years...in a few years. I said, "Oh, maybe. I've put my animosity about those years behind me. Might be kind of interesting to go. "
And then she admitted something that surprised me. Sometimes she has dreams about her teenage years and being socially excluded. I found that surprising, "You, socially excluded?" She admitted that no, she wasn't excluded in high school but she always felt that she didn't fit in, though she tried and she went through a difficult time her graduating year.
Funny, I didn't feel any sense of karmic retribution. Like, ha ha you got what you deserved! Just a feeling that things are not always as they seem. And that even though I was one of the ones being picked on, I still had a strong awareness of self, of who I really was. I was just trying to figure it all out, make sense of life. I wasn't the only one. And in a way, I was selfish and a bit judgmental to assume that everyone around me was happy and I was the only miserable one.
Anyway, I'll be going back home tomorrow, for a couple of days of quiet time before New Years Eve. I have a little secret about that day, but that will have to wait. No expectations, but a lot of hope and little doubt.
What's the value of knowing yourself? For one, you can't like someone unless you know them.
