NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

What draws you to your favorite people? 

For me it’s presence, openness, conviction, kindness, honesty, constancy, and most importantly, curiosity.  My best friends hold me up and hold me accountable.  They ask open, honest questions, and they really listen.  They see, hear, understand, accept, and love me.  They make joyful effort to meet me in my struggles to observe, understand, and integrate my experiences—to learn.  They keep me honest, never letting me get away with small-minded BS.  And they are all master learners themselves.

Lately I notice people, mostly men, who speak in declaration, refutation, and rhetoric.  They rarely ask questions that aren’t leading, dismissing, or prelude to soliloquy.  They interrupt incessantly.  I used to suffer greatly from encounters with such haute-pedants, from the utter unilaterality of conversation.   If they listened at all, it was to argue rather than to understand or broaden perspective.  Exhausting.  Today I moderate my expectations in such exchanges.  I accept what is, let go my wishes to be understood.  I focus instead on understanding, and my learning burgeons—often as much about myself as anything or anyone else.  My best friends point me to this higher plain of attention.

Tonight I see my tribe as a small, über-productive beehive.  Every day we sisters (and some brothers) survey our vast and diverse environment for new nectar.  It can be dangerous out there, but we’re tough and make it home.  As one dances out the journey, others attend and minister with love.  Together, we take everybody’s learning and make the sweetest honey, the insights and wisdom that nourish and sustain us—that drive us onward, seeking ever farther, wider, and higher meaning and purpose. 

How does your hive make you better?