I often talk - and write - about how I live in The Land of Contrasts.
Mexico is both so very sweet and so very tough, often within the same hour. It gives so much and asks for so much.
And yet, as much as I like to say that The Contrasts are a Mexican specialty, I realize that they may be more of a … living life as a human specialty.
The last two days have been pretty darn dreamy for me. In collaboration with a beautiful non-profit organization, I have had the bliss of creating a significant art project with local women, a project that will generate a pool of money for women’s healthcare needs.
As soon as it is fully ready to be shared, I will say more about the project but for now, I want to talk about the joy.
Together, we spent two days measuring, drawing, and painting one hundred hearts of many colors on large pieces of wood. Eating, laughing, creating beauty. Beauty that will bring peace of mind, all in my little home at the edge of the jungle. There were moments as I was painting when I took a step back and was filled with a blend of gratitude and awe like several dreams come true in one colorful package.
Last night, after everyone left and as I was organizing art supplies and taking a look at all that got done, I was taken aback by how much beauty was all around me. I sat on a chair on my patio and let it all in. The garden with its flowers and fruits and birds. The jungle sounds, the roosters, the divinely comfortable temperature, the four large pieces of art, and the reason we made them. My pups. All of it.
Then before going to bed, I did exactly what I advise my coaching clients not to do: I took a look at the news. Within minutes I was reading about a family who had traveled from Venezuela through the Darian Gap and across Mexico. They had arrived at the border with an appointment for their asylum interview. Which had gotten canceled the day before.
I don’t know these people and I don’t know their stories. I do know that to take your family across the Darian Gap you must be running from something pretty terrible. I remember an eight-year-old boy in the refugee center where I volunteered a few years ago. His mama had put him on a boat to cross over to Greece in the middle of the night. She couldn’t go. She knew the risk of sending him. She likely knew that she would never see her child again.
No one does this unless the cost of staying is bigger than the risk of leaving.
When my family was expelled from Spain in 1492, Bayezid II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire granted them permission to settle and become citizens. My family was welcomed and thrived there for several generations. When they ran from the Germans a few centuries later and arrived in France, they were again able to start a new life. Some of this story does not end happily but here I am and here are my children and now my children’s children. Because most of my ancestors were able to escape terrible terrible things and start over and contribute to a new country.
All this to say, on some level, my cells know of this. As does my memory of having spent time on Lesvos island during a cold winter.
The story of the Venezuelan family unraveled me. I could physically feel the weight of the disappointment, the exhaustion, the hopelessness. I wanted to drive up and scoop them all up. Bring them to my home and make it better. I wanted I wanted I wanted… to do something to take away the terror. And I knew that I had nothing, absolutely nothing to offer.
So with all these colorful hearts on my patio, I went to bed and meditated and prayed. I asked to please be shown how I could help.
I didn’t sleep well and this morning I was happy to see once again the beauty we had created during our last two days of painting. I was aware of The Contrasts, how it all exists at the same time, how we can be so enchanted one moment and feel so gutted the next. I sat with that and breathed through it. Letting both be true.
I saw a hummingbird kiss a flower and I let myself trust that. I saw my cat perched on top of two pillows and celebrated her ability to find comfort. I allowed myself to get fed by the perfect nature around me, the peace of the morning.
And then Marley ran through the front gate, so happy to see me and having very obviously enjoyed a second breakfast of one of the neighbor’s baby’s poopy diapers.
Contrasts.