"I feel sad when you're sad...I feel glad when you're glad"

I apologize for the corny Barry reference, my Mom always sang that song to me! Recently many of my students have questioned me with the likes of “Ms. L, why or HOW do you always seem so happy?” In any given moment I can be seen laughing and smiling it up in the halls of my school, with family, or friends, or yes, even alone in the car while listening to the Z100 phone tap on the way to work.  It is hard to explain the sadness/joy dichotomy to a 16 year old, but nonetheless it has caused me to sit back and reflect on this.

I think sadness gets a bad rap for the most part. It is truly one of the most misunderstood emotions. Sadness is an indicator of our capacity for joy. I am sure there is some more official scientific explanation for knowing something based on knowing its opposite. How can we know cold without hot? What would wet occur as if we did not know dry?

There is a picture taken of me at the lovely Dan and Samantha Miller wedding fest that has impacted my experience of joy and my relationship to it. It’s in my profile pictures on Facebook and is one of my favorites. At a poignant and funny moment in the wedding ceremony, I am captured looking up to the sky, laughing, and in the process of clapping my hands. By the way Millers, I have a movie like memory: It was when Dan vowed to never make Samantha watch Glee with him! In an email I saved from a comment about the picture, Dan commented: "It's the epitome of who you are in the world - uncontainable joy :)" 

I have realized in the past few weeks that my capacity for joy is directly related to my ability to let myself experience sadness. This is not the kind of sadness that paralyzes me or prevents me from going about my day. I have had the fortunate experience to have wonderful, deep, and meaningful people and experiences touch my life in ways I never expected. I am no longer afraid of the dreaded “S” word for I know that my uncontainable joy is on the other side.

I will go with humility here and defer to the great Kahlil Gibran:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Remembering Joan McNeill ~ Her gift to us was OURSELVES!

Today I honor and celebrate an incredible woman I had an opportunity to grow and work with at a most important time in my life. Joan McNeill was and is a Mother Theresa of sorts, seeing the beauty and good in each human being as if it was what God has placed her on the earth to do. A svelte, angelic woman who was a pure ball of energy, she exuded pure possibility. “No”, “can’t” or any type of excuse just didn’t live in her language. She was gentle, yet fiery, empowering to the individual, but always speaking from her ultimate stand in life: the transformation of human beings.

Just shy of 30 years old, I was given a very unique opportunity at Landmark Education (where I met Joan) to take a leadership position that would change my life. For those of you who don’t know, Landmark is a global education enterprise offering programs that enable people to live extraordinary lives. Their flagship program “The Landmark Forum” is a 3 day seminar on what it is to be a human being, at the cause of your extraordinary life at all times.

As I progressed through Landmark’s programs I became an Introduction Leader (leading introductions to people about the Landmark Forum). I somehow fell into a conversation with Boaz Gilad and Joan McNeill about becoming the team leader of the Introduction Leader Body, a group of over 200 stellar individuals who lead Introductions to the Landmark Forum all over NY, NJ, and CT.  Joan at the time was a staff member in the New York Center, as the acting registration manager, and I would be working closely with her.

It is through Joan that I truly learned to interact with the highest level of a person’s being. Someone could be occurring as a total ball of crud, and she would elicit their best selves within a few seconds. How do I know this? I was often being the ball of crud. Within a few minutes Joan would speak right through the junk to who I was. When you choose to live into the listening of another who is seeing you as you are, you have the choice literally shift your being in the moment.

Joan became a wise sage in my life wo taught me the part of Landmark’s definition of integrity that I struggled with the most. I seemed to grasp that integrity was honoring my word, doing what I said I would, on time, and communicating as soon as possible if I was not going to be able to deliver. The second part of integrity is KEY: Keeping an empowering context (conversation for possibility) present for myself and my life. This is who Joan was and still is in Spirit: an ongoing empowering context. In the face of disease, she was going to be a “YES” to life as long as she possibly could.

Upon Joan’s passing, I have been reflecting on the gifts that she gave me, and the power to dig deep and pull up this empowering context for myself and my life is the thing she has left in my soul.

I have the capacity to feel things very deeply, moving through the human experience quickly; seemingly unprotected, with little to no guard. However within hours, or sometimes a day I am once again present to the extraordinary gift of life, and the opportunity I have each day to make a difference with my students, friends, family, and the stranger I might meet in the elevator. This does not mean I don’t get angry, sad, hold grudges at times, or make mistakes. I say things I regret, make errors in judgment, like everyone else.  I am still working on Joanie’s instant turnaround time, but I know it is possible!!

When I heard of Joan’s passing, I tried to remember the last time I had seen or talked to her and I didn’t. This at first made me sad. I knew it was probably just a few years ago.  It is not the details of Joan we will remember most, but the gift she was to so many of us. Sure, I remember her “magic wand”: her precious yellow led pencil, and the way she seemed to just float through a room, brightening it within milliseconds. For those of us who had the unique opportunity to be trained by her, we will remain forever blessed.  We will remember who she was for us, and the possibility she brought forth in us. Her gift to us was ourselves, and for this we will be eternally grateful.

Today many of us will celebrate her life together. Through tears of joy, we will connect to the Spirit that was and is Joan McNeill: PURE JOY AND POSSIBLITY! 

Calling Ourselves Out!

There is a moment in your life when it occurs to you that you may be being a colossal hypocrite. You look at the words that escape from your mouth to the people you care about. "You are amazing; you can do anything!" "Life always works out exactly as it should; have faith." “There are no accidents, each person, place or experience divinely arrives at the right time."

I walk through the halls, "high-fiving"my students, coaching high school freshman to believe in their potential, and championing my friends and family to believe that all things good are on their way to them. The annoying cliché gnaws at me:  "Those who can't do; teach." 

Since I know so many absurdly inspiring leaders and champions for humanity, I am sure many of you can relate to the challenge we face every day to practice, absorb, and LIVE the truth that is uniquely ours. Well today, October 3rd, 2011 I am officially calling myself out. HYPOCRITE! LIAR PANTS! You are FULL OF IT! 

Though there is no formal "ending" to this challenge, there are however critical points of our lives where we MUST face this admitted weakness. Get your big girl/boy pants on and take yourself on my friends. This is one of those times in my life. I look around and I see beauty, inspiration, and abundance everywhere I go. My usual tendency is to look behind me, thinking this amazing stuff is for someone else just beyond me. "Who me?" "This crazy amazing life is for me? No, you shouldn't have, REALLY."

Whatever you believe in: God, the universe, source; whether you like it or not, they are ALL CONSPIRING in your favor - AND MINE. We rock. We really do. There is nothing that we honestly desire for our lives that we don't rightly deserve. 

For someone who gets as excited as I do to wake up in the morning, like any proud dork does, this is a lovely epiphany for me. Thought I have experienced before at times, it has never shaken me to my core as it does now. 

So who would like to join me? Who would like to call themselves out and look in the mirror? I am grateful for my unique deep love for the human spirit. Today I include my own in that love. Rock it out people; today and all days.