A few nights back I was out doing rounds. New client. Only knew her through a quick phone conversation and then off to meet her in person. What do you know about someone after just one call? Not much, for sure. I guessed (by her street address) that she might be mid-60s.
People make mistakes with their lives. They get hurt. Sometimes, they heal. Sometimes, they don’t. For many people, it seems that the they have no control over which outcome they’ll follow. Fate will somehow decide if they’ll heal. Fate will somewhow decide if they’ll get help. They believe that it’s out of their hands. Others are different. Others just “fix it”. She was one of those types. She talked of linden tea and some other teas I hadn’t heard about in years. She talked about growing chestnut trees in the front yard. Picking apples from a tree she’d planted years back. She knew about manual osteopaths (that all by itself was somewhat surprising because it’s a bit new out here). Told me about her husband, brother, sister by now long dead. She missed them, but had clearly moved on without them. She had her purpose in life and was pursuing it with a passion. She talked of the importance of staying on the move.
I’d guessed she was mid to late ’60s. But some things were just not adding up. I carefully worked around to asking how old she was. She was 82…
The drive back to the office was slow that night. On purpose. It was a thinking time and I took my time. On purpose. I drove through old haunts of years gone by as the night fell and the streetlights came on. Past the loading docks, past the parking lots, past the glittery places, the instant loan shops, the fast food joints. Not a speck of nature lives in these places. There are no trees. No bushes. No grassy areas. Just concrete, glass, lots of dumpsters and streetlights. I took my time. On purpose. I watched the drivers jump lanes, watched them cut each other off as they raced to the next stop light trying to be the first to get there. I used to wonder why they’d race each other. That night, I slowed down when they’d try cutting me off. On purpose. Just let them push into my lane in front of me. On purpose.
It’s taken me nearly a week to write this out. As I do my work, I try to leave my clients some homework. Something they can apply to their lives to help “heal what ails them”. That night, as I drove home, I realized that the reverse had happened. I had been the one to learn something: the importance of purpose and staying on the move. Thank you, Maggie.
(This post was originally on my Blogger site: https://robhodgins.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-lesson-learned.html. I moved it here after learning about Google’s plan to shut down its Google + service. I decided at that time that I really had no idea what the plans were for any of their services (including the Blogger service). That bothered me. I decided (for legacy purposes) to move this and other posts to WordPress.)