We Are Meant to Bump Into Each Other
I had a really odd moment yesterday that I can’t fully explain, but it’s worth trying. It was weird, but in a good way. The first farmers market of the year was going on, we had plans to paint James’ triplex and then the Renaissance Fair was happening. We decided we’d park at the triplex and walk to both, doing some painting in between. So we go.
On the way we see a yard sale across the street. Not wanting to pack more than we need to, we walk by, even though we love a good yard sale. Our first stop was to grab the rhubarb plant from a local permaculture farmer – I missed out last year for waiting too long because I didn’t want to carry around the big pot. Not this year, we carried the big pot. We had a great time bouncing around the market, showing our rhubarb around, seeing some new and exciting vendors (including a very talented spoon and coin artist who shared some great tips with us!). We dropped by a local diner just as they opened and scored a coveted patio seat. To add a cherry on top, a Great Dane curls up at the table right next to us! Of course I ask James to swap me seats so I could be near him and continued to insert myself into this friendly mother/daughter pair’s day, who are just trying to have lunch. It was a lovely conversations though, we found out we are both in the same Dane club and I actually know of her other Dane. She joined just when we left Boise but we have lots of dane friends in common. I got to fill up my Great Dane bucket, almost to the top, full of leans and loves with Doug the Blue Great Dane who has a goofy smile just like our Denver did!
That was not the weird thing though.
We were a little later than we intended on being for painting but it was worth the cuddles and pets. I finally pulled myself away from Doug, we grab our rhubarb and headed back toward the triplex. We notice the yard sale is still up and going so we cross the street and dropped by. While we like yard sale-ing, we don’t generally get very much. This one had stuff for everyone though. Hazel has been getting into poetry and there were books galore on that. They also had really cute clothes, not everything she wanted fit her but she found some new cardigans and a rainbow argyle sweater vest that is adorable. I found a very cute red dress with polka-dots, a similar pattern to one I had when I was younger but a cute style that would fit my ‘older lady vibe’ better. Here is a picture of me wearing that red polka dotted dress from 15 years ago, I loved it.
Anyway, I decided, if the dress was my size, I’d get it. It was! As soon as I grabbed it I had this nostalgia and excitement for finding another red polka-dotted dress to add into my life. I was also kind of sad this new dress was leaving its owner because who doesn’t benefit from a red polka dotted outfit!?
Here is the weird part.
When I picked up the dress I had the overwhelming need to share kindness and goodness with whoever’s dress this had been. I think I am a pretty kind and a decent human overall but I haven’t had this feeling before, the feeling I needed to do extra. I also am a pretty extreme introvert (unless there is a great dane involved apparently). I don’t know how to do this thing I never felt compelled to do before. I certainly don’t know how to do it without being a freaking weirdo! It is only a certain type of person who moves to the mountains of north Idaho and lives off grid after all and that person is NOT generally a ‘people person’.
So, I did it as passively as I could. For the last few months I keep a little baggy of four-leaf clover keychains in my backpack from the kids’ market stand. I was asked over the winter by a lady who recognized Miles, if he was still selling them. She had bought one but wanted to get two more for her kids. I wasn’t prepared then so I decided after that to keep 3-4 in my bag for the future, just in case.
So, I reached into my bag and grabbed one of the clovers to stash it in my pocket with the grand (socially anxious) plan of trying to figure out to which of the several people running the yard sale, the dress had belonged. James found some pans for himself and Miles to do one of their metal forging tasks. Hazel found more clothes. I looked through the records and books and found one called “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campell and added it to my pile of scores.
That book pinged me because I have been reading a lot of Michael Meade books lately, which are shifting my whole perspective on life. He talks a lot about how the role of Mythos plays into our every day life which only seems to care about Logos, i.e. myth vs logic. One is quantifiable and one is just a feeling and therefore harder to justify. Logic is taken as true and real, mythos is taken as fantasy and make believe. One equates to fact and the other is intuition. One is hard to ignore, the other is easy to push to the back burner. What I know to be true is that my life has only ever made sense when I have followed my internal intuition, my mythos. What Michael Meade claims to be true is that the world can only rescue itself if we animals on it start believing in ourselves and our own, unique inner voices, who are speaking to us through our lived experiences every day. His overall aim is expressing how each of us are unique, whole and meant to impact this world if we could only find the courage to believe ourselves.
Michael Mead references this book, “The Power of Myth”, in his own writings. So when I saw it in their books, to me, this solidified that I cannot get out of at least trying to do this good deed I felt called to do for the dress owner.
So we go check out.
I am trying to get brave enough to ask whose dress it was. As I am flipping through our bounty the gal recording sales says, “oh yay! I am so glad someone is getting this, it’s such a lovely dress!” I say, “Oh, it was yours then?” she says, “yep, I love it!”
So I say “you just made that really easy on me, I have a gift for the owner of this dress once we get you paid.” So we flip through the rest, she marks all the money on each persons tally and I pay her. Then I reach into my pocket and I tell her, “this is pretty weird but I just have this overwhelming feeling to give you this (I hand her the clover) and wish you good luck on your next adventures, I think it’s going to be good.”
She gasps and tells me, “this is so weird!” (she’s kind of short on words) but tells me that she actually had a dream last night where, at that very yard sale, someone came up to her and wished her good luck and it was just really kind and really meant a lot to her when she woke up so it felt really strange that I just did that. She hadn’t ever seen a four leaf clover before and was kind of just floored at what had just happened. Having checked off my goal of being super weird, and knowing that it had hit right and not actually as super weird, we hightailed it out of there. Have I mentioned how awkward I am… but good deed done, we could go paint!
We walk back, each of us holding handfuls of loot: books, rhubarb, clothes, pans, etc. There is just a few blocks to go but I cannot stop these thoughts that I could and should have explained better to her why I felt so compelled. I had been prepared to be a weirdo. I was not prepared for it to be well received.
So it gets weirder
Hazel and I paint the house – our goal is to primer the red trim so today we can finish it (we did). James goes to melt down Miles’ aluminum can collection with him, something he has been itching to do for a couple weeks now. I still have this nagging feeling that I have to go back and tell this young-ish gal what I think it means that we both had this weird intuition which crossed paths that day. And I do have a thought at what it means, but I don’t quite know how to say it…
I decide I am driving myself nuts overthinking it and decide we would just get through painting, then, if I still wanted to, I would walk down and see if they were still out there. Then I could be a bigger weirdo. If it was meant to happen, it would happen when I was done painting.
So, we wrap up, I ask Hazel if she wants to go do something weird with me. She’s like, “ummm, not really, but what is it?” So I tell her I kind of want to go share something else with that girl I gave the clover to. She asks what I am going to say and all I can say is, “I have no idea, but I feel like I need to…” I’m about half in and half out at this point on whether I would actually go through with it. But I decide to go tell James I will be right back because I am going to go do something weird. He knows me well enough to not even ask what, he just says “Ok.” (hahaha!)
But then something else happens, and this is also odd!
Side quest: While I am down there telling him we’ll be right back, one of his tenants, Sean, comes out to say hello and share some projects he’s working on. He built a cool mod in his van for a car camping roadtrip he’s taking with his son this summer to the coast. It’s rad, I check it out, bond over building movable dwelling stuff. I will preface this by saying in the year this man has lived there, I have shared about six words in passing, mostly just “hello”. This day of all days, he goes down this path telling me the point of their trip is to find sea shells. It turns out he does sound therapy as his passion and he recently found out that sea shells with the fibonacci spiral actually resonate with specific tuning forks in a completely unique way. He dives down sharing his experiences, something that doesn’t resonate directly with me but how he is talking about it sure does. This is his life’s passion and focus and this is a new, cool thing he is discovering. He fully realizes it is not everyones ‘thing’ but he tells me about how his body just feels most aligned and he feels most purposeful and valuable and youthful in his life when he is using sound to help other people. He said, “It felt really weird at first to tell others about this thing I felt like I was unlocking but, after 15 years of walking this path, it now feels more weird to not speak my truth about this unique intuition I have.” Gosh did THAT resonate….
So here I was, feeling some weird intuition, about 50/50 on whether or not I would follow through on it and this guy I have never known much about just happens to speak this truth to me. It felt like the exact feeling I was currently having. Once again, I guess the universe was not going to let me bail on this self-imposed mission that somehow felt more important than any job I ever had. It had now been a couple hours and there was no telling if the yard sale was still going, but I guess I had to go see.
So I go
Hazel is kind enough to go with me, knowing full well I may embarrass her entirely. She keeps asking me what I am going to say and all I can say is I don’t know at all yet. There were a ton of people putting on this yard sale and I really don’t want an audience while I possibly make a giant fool of myself but I decide it is much creepier to try to get this girl alone. I make my peace knowing I will likely have an audience. It had been a couple hours and I realize I have know idea what this girl looks like. I was so nervous before that I didn’t really pay attention. I thought maybe she has short hair but I don’t even know the color. I ask Hazel, she doesn’t know.
We crest the hill and see there are still people there but the yard sale is cleaned up. There is probably a dozen people in the yard but everything else is gone. They are packed up, they may even be gone by the time we get there (sarcasm in my mind, still looking for an out, says ‘darn!’). We are 20 feet away and I realize I have NO IDEA which person I gave this to but there are a LOT more people here, it must be some friends meeting up after the sale. I don’t even know if the girl is in the crowd. I am sharing my absolutely nervousness with Hazel every step of the way. She understands my need to walk straight on by. I called it off! I decided I am not going to be this weirdo today. We walk past.
Then Hazel says, “I think it is the one in the red coat.”
I look back with no recognition at all. But, decide, instead of crossing the street and hightailing it back, we will just turn around and walk right back by and give it one more shot. So we do. The two guys talking to the girl in the red coat split just long enough for me to see the clover clipped to her jacket zipper. It’s on. Oh no…
She catches my eye and smiles. I am in it now. I walk up to her and her friends. This is our (paraphrased) exchange:
Me: “I gave you the clover earlier, right?’
Her (nervously): “Oh yes. Do you need it back? Here you go (unclipping it so fast like she just knew it wasn’t meant to be hers)” (I realized then that she was much more nervous than me in this moment, which I felt bad about. But I was reminded about a podcast I recently heard, Micheal Meade none-the-less, who talked about the importance of wisdom. I instantly felt like THAT was what was happening. I saw a young me in her and felt like I could offer her a shortcut. At that moment I knew what I was going to say. PHEW!)
Me: “no, no, no, it’s yours. I just have something else really weird to say which I feel absolutely compelled to share with you for reasons I don’t even understand. And I am super sorry if this is totally weird for you.”
The guys she was talking to stepped back two steps, something I found completely respectful, even if unnecessary. They even said ‘this is awesome, this is great!’, and eagerly waited to be our audience. She said, “that was just so nice and I am telling you I had this dream and it is just kind of trippy what happened.”
Me: “That’s kind of why I am here, I felt such relief when you said you had a dream about this happening. I was so afraid I was being a weirdo but you confirmed my sort of intuition about this situation with your own intuition and I think that means something. And I think I am supposed to tell you what I think it means. Again, I am SO sorry if this is wigging you out!”
She had tears in her eyes at this point: “No it was just the sweetest thing that ever happened, it really means a lot to me!” The guys on the side are whispering how awesome this is.
Me: “So here’s what I think it means, and I am just learning more about this so take it however you want to. We are all gifted with logic and with intuition. People in general give a lot of credit to logic because it’s explainable. After reading a lot about the power of mythos, and finding THIS BOOK (I brought it) here at your yard sale, which has been referenced in every book that has kind of helped shift my world view in the way that leads me back here now, I take it as a push that I have to follow my weird instinct right now and tell you this. I believe you have good instincts that you need to pay special attention to them, even when they might not make sense. Our instincts are powerful and often unexplainable, but I think they are the only thing we have left to help rebalance life. I think what it means that you had a dream and I randomly gave you a clover, something I have never done before by the way – and was just as weird to me as it probably was to you, is that your instincts and manifestations are really good. I think you have some really good opportunities in your future, which will keep presenting themselves to you. I think you specifically have to heed your instincts along the way. What I would hope for you is that you to speak kindly to yourself and that, anytime you see a clover now, that you’re reminded how powerful your instincts are. I believe we are meant to bump into each other and that we’re meant to impact each other, which is why I am here saying this to you right now. That doesn’t mean that it has to be big or profound, just that we need to do the weird thing if your guts are telling you to. Does any of this make sense to you?”
She said, “yes.”
The guys literally clapped, she was crying and thanking me telling me how much it meant and that it’s the coolest thing to happen to her ever. Somehow I think the situation was meant to have an audience because it’s weird enough that both her and I probably would have written it off without that accountability. I had tears of relief in my eyes for doing the weird thing and I am beyond grateful it hit right. I scurried off with Hazel as quick as I could, knowing nothing at all about this girl in the red coat other than she was moving and had an opportunity in front of her that she was unsure of and that somehow my words helped her because she said so. I meant it as more of a whole life thing but I am glad it was directly applicable somehow, too.
As we walked away, Hazel said “yippie!” and told me she was proud of me for doing the hard thing even though I was scared. I asked her if it was weird to know that grown-ups get scared, too. She said yup, but it makes sense, and that she was glad to know she wasn’t the only one who gets scared.
I don’t get anything for this – logically
I have faith it was an important moment in my life. I’m even arrogant enough to think it was an important moment in her life because I felt in my bones how much it mattered. I can’t truly explain it to anyone because it really doesn’t make logical sense. That might in fact be the point though. I don’t know if or how that exchange will manifest over the years, for her or those guys who were witnesses or even for myself. I don’t know her name, where she is heading or really anything at all about her so I can’t keep up with her. None of that is the point though, or a reason why I did it. It just felt really important. I won’t ever know any outcome, if there even is one, but it feels good to bump into a stranger in a cool and profound way, at least for me, and hopefully for her/them.
Here’s my pretty, new, $4, red polka dotted dress. It has pockets!
