Precious Stones and Open Hearts

'A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream.
The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food.
The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation.
The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime.
But, a few days later, he came back to return the stone to the wise woman.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I know how valuable this stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious.... Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me this stone.”'
 ~ as posted on Paulo Coehlo's blog

I love this story and I wonder at times if I possess that which enabled her to give away her precious stone. I hope I do. I try to be kind in my thoughts and actions but I know there are times I'm not perfect by any stretch especially over the past 5 months. There are many of you whom I owe a phone call to or a response to an email. I know in my heart of hearts that there are many of you who understand that I just haven't been able to. There are others however who haven't understood.

I had my heart broken by a friend last month who was upset because I hadn't responded to an email within the alloted time (it was less than a week) than she expected me to and then proceeded to delete me from her list of friends on Facebook. When I asked why she let me know that she has 'expectations' of her friends.

Well, how do I respond to that? I didn't. What can I say that I haven't already been saying? Having my thyroid surgically removed due to cancer wiped me out for months and months and unless you have gone through it there is no way you can ever understand the intense lethargy, exhaustion, grief, depression and overwhelming sadness that completely takes over every sense of being.

Expectations! How can someone have any expectation of me when my only expectation of myself was to get out of bed, have a shower and get dressed. There were many, many days when only one of those was accomplished and that was a successful day! Some have asked why would I be friends with someone like that and my response has been because I really care about her and I thought we were friends even though this is probably the 5th time during our friendship that she has decided not to be friends with me anymore.

I don't have expectations on my friends other than to be happy, stay in touch when you can and laugh, giggle, play, hold our shared secrets sacred and love, love, love. What else is there? I guess for some its responding to an email within the unknown alloted proper response time or else the delete button will be pushed.

Life is short and so intense. We are all so pressured to 'BE' something that most of the time we just can't pull off with perfect grace and ease. We bumble along trying to please and most of the time fall flat with egg on our face. Can we not just love and respect each other for who we are and where we are at whatever moment in life?

There is this great line that I love to remind myself of when I feel myself sliding towards disappapointment in someone and that is,  'Every single human being at every moment of the past, if the entire situation is taken into account, has always done the very best he or she could do and so deserves neither blame nor reproach from anyone, including self. This, in particular, is true of you.' ~the beautiful late Harvey Jackins founder and creator of Re-Evaluation Co-Counselling. (http://www.rc.org/ )

Imagine a world where we would give so much of ourselves that we would freely give our most precious stone to a complete stranger without question when they asked for it or if we never again blamed or expressed disapproval to anyone. How open our hearts would be!

This week I'm entering into a very intense cleansing and part of this cleanse is not to just clean out my body but also my mind, my heart and the clutter including friends who have 'expectations' on me. I know I'll never ever live up to them so let's just not even start that way no one will be let down.

God Bless you my friends and may you all find peace with your heart wide open!