Hello, New Friend!

A couple days before my Indonesian adventure came to a close, my dear friend MaryCay Durrant sent me an email that closed with the words, “Hello, new friend!”

What a gift those three little words are. They are a gift to someone like me who is coming home from a long journey, and as I think about them, they are gifts we can offer those around us each and every day.

When I first read the words, “Hello, new friend,” I realized she struck on what I was still coming to know myself. I am not the same person who left en route to Japan a month and a half ago.

Since July 22nd, I have visited an important part of my lineage in Hiroshima, traveled through Bali alone and with two people I care for dearly, found a wonderful new hobby in diving, and spent a lot (A LOT) of time in silence, writing, praying and ruminating. Clouds have parted on old perspectives to find both clear skies and storms of new ones.

Seekers and searchers like me are always growing, and much of that growth happens inside before fruits ever bloom outside. This trip was not about simply seeing a new country but to continue the process of integration and restoration required of a heart-centered, sustainable, and purposeful way of life.  I might look the same and in many ways act the same, but healthy new seeds were planted in my time away.

What I know for sure is that being seen as I am now and not who I was two months, two years, or ten years ago is wonderful gift. It allows for the freedom to discover new capacities and more authentic ways of being. It allows for the mistakes and accomplishments of the past to become the clear canvas for whatever is most true right now to express and be.

Having experienced the power of, “Hello, new friend,” in a more extreme circumstance of returning from a 6 week journey, I am aware of the gift those words can be each day.

What would happen if I allowed all of the people in my life to show up as a new friend each day? What if love is learning who people are as they are now completely free of the rights and wrongs, the falls and the victories of yesterday?

This way of seeing opens the doorway of curiosity, doesn’t it? It allows for less knowing and judging and more discovery, learning, and perhaps love. Children seem to live this way. Too often, our adult minds triggered by fear shove our pasts into our future with no room for possibility to breathe.

So, today, I choose love in the form of three little words: Hello, New Friend. How can I allow those around me to show up anew? How can I continue to be who I am now separate from who I’ve been?

I invite you into the inquiry of who you are today free of all of your past. And, I invite you to think about those in your life that you can gift freedom from the past, presence to what is now, and in turn, space for who they are becoming.  This choice seems to me a great act of love that can be given over and over and over again.