May The Force be with you

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

I just cried. I got of the phone with my best friend. He is getting married tomorrow with the love of his life. It will be beautiful, emotional, spiritual, religious, wild and sexy. All my friends will be there. And I won’t. It is tough.

Still, I feel pride and joy too. It is such a good feeling when two people really find each other and with this couple it’s really the case. You could say that after a first round that took multiple years they both were sent on a personal mission. It looked like to would never get back together again. But then destiny took a couple of unexpected and wonderful turns and opened their eyes and hearts at exactly the right moment. They could see each other. They came home. They saw that what they were looking for had been there all along.

We need these types of stories. Or at least I do. It gives me hope. I have the feeling that in my relationships I got so close in really meeting the other, so many things felt ‘right’. How could it slip through my fingers like sand, leaving me empty handed? But the trick is not to get stuck in feeling sorry for myself. Life weaves itself perfectly. It is doing that right in front of my nose. Well, not right in front of my nose but on the other side of the world, tomorrow in a church in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile I am in Sydney finding my way. I have given my first workshop and it is always humbling to see the transformation happening in people. We need so little. The only thing I do really is giving people permission and an opportunity to be real. Within 15 minutes hard-working stressed out people who found time to spend time with me after a busy day shift into another mode, a mode that is quite new to them. The relief and the bonding are almost tangible.

I just woke up. The four paragraphs above I typed last night, and then I received a Skype call from Hong Kong that took a bit longer than expected. So I continue writing now, on Friday morning. And I cried again and feel all numb. But for a completely different reason.

As I opened up Facebook, something I do pretty much first thing every morning since I am glued to my iPhone, I see a message on the wall of my buddy Ernst, a high school friend who I intend to visit next week in California. It announced the funeral of Sam van Eeghen. My heart missed a beat. A couple of seconds I cling to the thought that Sam is a revered but distant family member as their family lineage is old and extended. Then I read on and receive the blow to the gut: Sam was his son, the beautiful son Ernst was so eager to show me. Sam only lived for 4 months and 2 weeks. And then he left our planet again. Just like that.

Yesterday Ernst and his wife Gretchen buried their baby boy and tomorrow Bas will make Karin his wife. Both events touch me deeply, they touch both sides of my deep wish to have a family. One story feels so ‘right’ and the other story feels so ‘wrong’. I really don’t know what to say. Our lives are so precious and so unpredictable. And difficult. It is so easy to see that there is something sacred about two people expressing their love and commitment to each other in God’s house. And it is easy to see that a baby is a result of passion and an expression of pure, innocent love, and that his coming into existence is both mysterious and sacred. I even know that lives are to be lived fully and that a full life doesn’t have to be a long life. Sam did a perfect job. But I still would have wished Sam to stay with us longer.

My heart goes out to Ernst and Gretchen and Bas and Karin. May The Force be with you all.