As my kids sat down this year and were asked to prepare their lists of what they wanted from “Santa” this year…I realized that as adults we often miss this opportunity to list what our hearts really desire.
We don’t get to send our own wishes to the North Pole and have them magically fulfilled on Christmas morning. Or hand them over to our parents to make come true.
What we really want or really need might even be much unknown to the people we love most…since we might not ever even tell them.
I was very lucky enough over the last few days to have something I really really want and need, to be magically taken care of by two other people in my life. It really felt like a random act of kindness to me….something that will stick in my mind and my heart forever. Something they may never realize the full impact their gesture had on me (until they read my blog tonight)!
If I did have a Santa list I doubt I would ever ask for anything material, it’s just not the type of thing I really want in general. My wish list is much harder to get than a new blender and often demand a lot of hope, hard work and determination on many levels. Often my wishes feel like I am wishing for the impossible. And I somehow make them possible and achievable.
I have four mentors in my professional life that I very often go to and ask advice to because I consider them so much smarter, and more worldly than I am currently. One of them recently told me “ how interesting he found it that I never seek advice on matters that involves myself but only on matters than involve my children or family” another one told me “all it takes to get what you want is one conversation-the right one. Keep on having those conversations until you reach the right one that will fulfill your desire”.
So I have been going around in the last few months having many many conversations about my son Bear having missed his sports exam at high school ,due to surgery, and trying to find that one that will actually get him into this program. If you read my blog you know I am up against what feels like a concrete and solid wall of the thickest concrete. Bureaucracy, processes, politics and precedence. Namely; the Elite Private French school system in Quebec.
So this Christmas I decided to give myself a gift. And instead of just talking (and likely boring) people about this subject, I decided to actually enlist their help. This help asking rarely occurs to me, it’s just not my style. It’s one thing to discuss and talk to people but to actually interfere with their time and life and request something I could possibly do myself?
I did it and it feels great.
(I recommend this to anyone who feels like their heart is about to fall out, who carries sadness around like a heavy backpack and who can’t stop obsessing about an important but all over trivial topic in the grand scheme of life that is not life threatening or harmful to health).
One day as my mentors words of “You need to have the right conversation” my Sister Schopenhauer appeared in my mind. A vision of her and her brilliance occurred to me. So I texted her and told her I absolutely needed to speak to her about Bear as quickly as possible.
Now keep in mind Sister Schopenhauer and I have a long history of trying to connect and playing phone tag and missing each other all the time. We are both very busy people, live in different countries, have both kids and busy careers and lots going on. We often promise to connect but can’t make it happen as often as we would like.
But this particular text….made her drop everything. It just shows the size of her huge heart. She really understood my panic-and if I was asking for help in the middle of the day when I knew perfectly well she was at the grocery store buying food for my niece’s birthday party with 6 girls sleeping over for her b-day…..I must be very desperate.
And so she spoke to me for 30 minutes on her cell, long distance, from the grocery store while my other niece fetched dips, and chips, and brown bread and veggie burgers. She listened, she analyzed and she took it all in. And she did not just listen…. she took a load off of me and unto herself. She sent me a lifeline.
A few days later she set me my gift: A draft of a letter that I can send to the school
And this should not just be called a letter. It is a fine masterpiece of art. It is a winner if I have ever seen one.
She additionally sends it to my brother for his comments. My brother is also brilliant. His comments on her draft were insightful, thought provoking, extremely relevant and he asked me to consider and reflect on some important points that I had failed to ponder.
Not sure if I have mentioned on my blog what a smart family I come from. It has actually always freaked me out a bit as to be honest with you my own IQ must be so much lower. My brother and sister in law are PHD’s, high academics who are professors and writers at important USA Universities. Honesty I regard them in the highest honor and my two nieces are every bit as gifted as their parents. My other brother is a producer at ABC and also a lawyer also in the USA. I am happy to be part of this wonderful gene pool and feel assured that if I need some good sound advice or some powerful media connections my brothers will take care of their little sisterJ
The final version of the draft gives me more than enough to write my own letter and is an extremely convincing, intelligent, respectful, political savvy plea for an appeal.
Schopenhauer even offered to fly out here to Montreal and go to the school herself!! One academic to another could be quite powerful don’t you think? Not to mention she is the sweetest thing on earth and beautiful. Intelligence, brains and sweetness can be a powerful and dangerous combination for men siting on the other side of the desk.
This conversation with Sister Schopenhauer and Brother Aero Mint, more than the letter…was the right conversation. I needed it it at that time and it set of a whole course of actions. I may need to use the letter and I may not if I have news before I send it, but my head is in the right place. I have been interrogated by two intelligent and reflective people. They put me on the path I was trying to find all alone in the dark. They caught my desperation and they dealt with it.
They loved me fully. They gave me my Christmas wish. They gave me themselves.
So as I move into stage two of my appeal….I move into it with a sense of kindness ,because I have felt kindness myself. I move ahead with understanding and a listening ear-because I have been bestowed this gift I. I move into this with compassion for the other point of view, because I have been heard. I move ahead with quiet, kind, positive and hopeful determination in a positive and tranquil and stress free type of way…because I don’t feel so alone.
I feel like I have people by my side that will be there beside me as “WE” win this. Together.
If there is one thing I have learned in my year of transformation, it has been the powerful influence of others in my life. I have spent so much of my life listening, and coaching and solving that it feel tremendously good to share and to seek and to ask for assistance. As one mentor put it “to allow the full contributions of others”.
I feel happy to have the pieces of my puzzle scattered and to have a team to help me assemble it. I am in awe of the kindness that was given to me today my sister in law and brother.
This gift will last me many years, as I pay it forward many times over to others. As I bask in the fullness and wonder…of simple receiving.
Merry Christmas to Me.
