Reoccurring themes

Reoccurring themes: I don’t know if you might have noticed in your own life or in that of someone close to you, but it seems like some people have reoccurring themes that present in their lives. Some of these themes might be positive and others might be negative. We of course know people who have the most amazing luck, and again others that have the worst luck. My brother tells the story about this poor kid that had this long string of accidents that kept putting him in the hospital, and then I know a guy that can do no wrong when it comes to making money….he has the Midas touch and everything he touches turns to gold. These are just a few examples, but there are many more out there of how one person can have incredibly similar situations that constantly reoccur. It has confounded me for a long period of time.

An acquaintance once offered her opinion on the subject saying that it was her belief that “the universe” (whatever or whoever that might be) is offering up these lessons that we need to learn. And until we learn all that we need to learn from these repetitive lessons, we will continue to have them served up to us. In the end she believed that we all need to learn very different and very personal lessons for our betterment, thus explaining while some were becoming wealthy, while others were spending their days in a hospital.

That was all said as a prelude to this next comment......I am constantly putting myself in situations where my prejudgments of people and situations, my narrow-mindedness, and my wanting or expecting some unfair advantage over others comes around full circle to slap me in the face. For example one time not too many years ago I walked into the SLC international airport preparing to take a short flight to Reno in a small Skywest plane. There in the lobby of the airport was a very, very large individual. My first thought was…wow the sorry sap that has to sit by that person on a plane. Two hours later as my plane was preparing to depart and the isle seat next to me was empty, I thought wow….it is my lucky day I am on one of these tiny planes and I am the only one on the plane to not have someone sitting next to them. Then it happened…..I learned very quickly who the sorry sap was to be.

There are hundred such stories I could tell you of such experiences in my life. I even mentioned some in the last post about the bus ride. Well here is yet another one. Several posts back I wrote about the same gender affection that you see here in Nepal. Knowing that I would get crap from certain individuals about being open minded to it, I made a preemptive strike by saying something like….be narrow minded if you must. Yep, I did it again…… I was in Bharatpur the other day and was walking down the street with a group of doctors from the hospital, when one of the older doctors reached out and grabbed my hand and started to talk to me. The conversation distracted my attention from the fact that he was holding my hand, but when the conversation ended he continued holding it. I was so unprepared for it and I didn’t know how to react. It absolutely unnerved me. My first thought was to look around to make sure there were no Americans nearby. When I realized how ridiculous that idea was (even though I had already checked and ascertained that there were none) I took a deep breath and started working through the long list of prejudiced feelings, emotions and discomforts I was facing at the time. It was by far one of the most challenging experiences I have had in for quite some time. It forced me to go head to head with some of my own insecurities, prejudices and discrepancies in what I am truly accepting of. I really was okay with the idea that Nepali men openly express their appreciation, respect and concern for other men in this manner, but I was apparently not okay with it if it included me. The battle went on for what was like 5 minutes as we continued to walk…… then suddenly, as I walked down the street in Bharatpur, I came to realize that I was grateful that this man, who I had only met a few days earlier, felt comfortable enough to express those feeling towards me by holding my hand…..and everything was okay.

I hope that if her belief about these “lessons from the universe” is in fact true, that I hurry my dumb can up and learn the dang lesson already!