33
About a month ago I met a man, by happenstance, who I immediately jumped into an in depth discussion with. About 10 minutes in he asked my age. I told him 33 and his eyes seemed to light up, “A very powerful number”, to which I blew air out my nose and said “Ya… that’s what they say…” I admitted that the number seemed to follow me but that it seemed to follow a lot of people and it was more likely that it was just a popular number and that once you take notice of something, you are inevitably going to notice it more, etc. Shortly after he said something to the effect of him never having met someone so in-tune with the universe, who also resisted its signs so much. I think I sort of mumbled it off with a sentiment of, “Ya ya ya, I’m working on it”, before changing the subject.
It’s true. I can be snarky and sarcastic by nature, and if I haven’t scoffed at anything overly spiritual aloud, I’ve certainly done so in my mind. It all seems so silly. I mean for example, I think crystals are as shiny and lovely as the next but hoarding them seems like a funny way to bring peace of mind. Is anyone even asking who’s ripping those out of the ground anyway? I digress. (Also if you haven’t watched the Amy Schumer skit featuring Bill Nye, please do. It’s hilarious.)
And so, I’ve mostly stayed in my own spiritual lane because I certainly don’t want to belittle or disrespect anyone else’s sense of spirituality. But, after this man who met me for all of 15 minutes, called me out on my strange resistance to “the universe,” along with a heaping backlog of things that kept happening to me that I knew anyone else grounded in spirituality would have saw as “signs,” I threw my hands up and said “fine, okay universe, I’m fucking listening!”
The truth is, I’ve always been listening. It’s the believing part that I’m stubborn about. Recently I was reminded about this girl I knew in high school (I still know her actually) whose friend circle overlapped mine. Me and my group of stoner girlfriends were pretty giggly at times, and honestly, those were the best times I had as an angsty teen with problems at home. My other friends pointed out one day that this girl would openly scoff at us when we got together and laughed and it bothered them. Admittedly, it appeared she thought herself more evolved and our silliness, stupid. Even at the time, I found her to be sad. How could someone look down so much on something as wonderful as laugher? She must be troubled. And she was… a 14 year old run-away living with random hippies she met on the road. Eventually, she softened to us and even joined us as a member of our giggly gang.
What I’ve realized is that in the face of the spiritual, esp. “signs,” I have been this girl. I take life quite seriously but no one who has ever met me would describe me as a dark horse. I’m often the first to use a weird voice, or make cooky facial expressions, or crack ridiculous jokes. I love humor as much as I love nature and art and music. So, I associate spiritual stuff with silliness? If spirituality is so flipping silly to me then I should be embracing it! And about a month ago, I decided to do just that. No, you won’t find me getting any sacred geometry tattoos, eating psychedelics, basing life choices off of astrological readings, or booking a trip to India (not that I judge anyone who does so). In fact, I’ve changed nothing about the way I live. I go out into nature several times a week, I say hello to the birds and rainbows as they come, I still feel the beauty of that brilliant peachy-pink color brushing up against that cool bluish-lavender color in a sunset very deeply. I still have the most wild and vivid dreams. I still feel those little sparks of joy in a passionate kiss or a good laugh. Yet, internally, I feel quite transformed. It’s like I’ve been the coy partner in a relationship with spirituality or what you might call “God” for so long, and they keep dropping the “I love you” bomb, and I’ve always kinda shuffled my feet and been like “Oh ya, I think you’re really great too…really enjoy being in your company!”… And once I finally admitted, “I love you, too,” much as it does when you share that moment with a person, only more expansively, I felt a warmth spread about my life and it really makes me wonder, what took me so long to join the giggly gang?
If I had to guess why this number has been following me, for what seems like always but esp., the past year… I would say that what it’s trying to tell me is that the home I’ve been searching for has been within me all along. And there is also a part of me which still thinks that’s total bullshit, and she is loved and at home too.
