When the Tornado Appears

When I craft a story, I often labor over the beginning only to change it completely, revert to the original idea, then labor over it some more before removing a few words, scrapping a few things, and determining it's good enough for now. Because I can always create another beginning when the time feels right. Or maybe I'll keep that one. Or make additional changes later. Or not.

The idea of creating a beginning, this sometimes complicated and tedious process, is something I've been thinking about lately. I find beginnings almost confounding, certainly noteworthy, and even cosmically mysterious. All of the stories we tell have a beginning chosen by the storyteller -- that's how stories work -- but I'm not certain even the protagonist of her own story knows exactly where the tale begins or if defined beginnings even exist.

So here's my story. . .

The last few weeks have felt like a summer hailstorm in the Bahamas, filled with a sense of 'how is this possible?' and of not knowing, of confusion that reaches beyond not knowing into the inability to fathom what the hell is transpiring and what the hell I don't actually know. I've been questioning, intermittently, and cursing, a lot. I've felt sadness and grief and gratitude and wonder and anger and betrayal and peace.

This is more than an existential crisis. This is almost tactile and is undeniably real.

This story may have begun last summer as I found shelter under the Taiwanese banyan trees or 15 years ago when I befriended an aspiring life coach in the allergy waiting room at South San Francisco Kaiser or a little under two weeks ago when, during a coaching training session in San Rafael, I participated in a "look into my eyes" exercise that altered part of my being.

The visual connection exercise began almost like a game. Grab a partner and two chairs; sit facing each other with knees touching; make eye contact with your partner as she sits across from you. That part was easy. But then we were told to keep looking, to hold the gaze and not speak nor smile nor make any kind of facial expression. After a minute, we closed our eyes for a few seconds -- respite from the intensity, I think -- and then reopened them and repeated the process. Once, twice, three times. And each time something changed. My thoughts -- similar to my partner's, I found out after the experience -- went from 'this is a little awkward' to 'wow, she has pretty eyes,' to 'I really appreciate this person, this being.' And then we had to rearrange our chairs so that we were back to back with the person, the visual contact being interrupted. And we chatted. And it was weird. I missed her, this woman I had been in class with for two months but barely knew. I wanted that contact back. I wanted to see my person, to reconnect. But we were no longer facing each other, and the exercise was complete.

I thought about the experience for days afterward. This may not have been the actual beginning of something but was definitely paramount to my reflection and questioning and honest-to-God soul expansion. Where does one person's being (or energy, soul, whatever) end and another's begin?  If, through intense eye contact, people can feel so connected, why are we generally disconnected?

The following week, on a Monday morning, San Jose experienced thunder, lightening, hail, and -- no joke here -- an earthquake simultaneously. Looking through the window of the business building at SJSU, I had to wonder, after telling my students I'd be terminating class and running from the building if I glimpsed a tornado on the horizon, if the planet's soul was rumbling along with mine. Was Mother Nature expanding too? Was she looking for her beginning or simply accepting the power of the moment, the fact that beginnings didn't actually exist?

Last night I googled the woman I met years ago at Kaiser but didn't find her. (She must be the only person not visible on-line.) If I'd been able to procure her e-mail address or see her on LinkedIn, I may have contacted her. I don't know what I would have said, probably something about her influence and about beginnings. She probably would have told me my beginning happened before we met. Or long after, who knows.

Maybe, in the end (pun intended), only defining moments exist, and those moments are connected, and we choose where we are and how we move forward. And sometimes we receive a little help, a little push, from the universe in the form of end-of-the-world natural occurrences or the thoughtful and powerful gaze of a stranger.