—Rumi
I rent a little surf shack in Mexico with some friends and family. It doesn’t have electricity and a lot of creature comforts we are used to, but it does have some nice surf and a flat roof. The flat roof is my favorite part. I’ve used the roof a lot for my work, holding therapeutic groups with the teens my company mentors. Many a great insight, revelation, and help has been received on that roof and I love nothing more than to pull out the mattress and look at the stars with the phone playing enough music to set the stage for some meditating.
When I went this past weekend that Rumi quote came along with me.
I turn 34 next week. I made a silly promise to myself when I was about 22 that I’d be in love and married by 35. The clock is ticking now, I guess. I haven’t wasted time since that little oath. I’ve followed dreams and built a life.
I’ve always loved being a builder. It started with wood blocks as a child and now is channeled towards business and people. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve done some other building. Walls. Lots of walls, different walls—all around my heart.
We all do this. Preparing, all of us for the eventual attacks from love.
Many a self-help book and guru has proclaimed that love can’t be controlled, that it just is, and that it is a force beyond our control. All true. Love is a beautiful thing when it can flow naturally. When we let it happen. When we don’t get in the way.
As Rumi said, we don’t have to seek for love. It really is all around us. I found myself on Saturday playing dodgeball with 15 kids I love in Mexico. We had a great time. We were hitting each other vigorously with the dodgeball but there was love and I stopped many a time to soak it in. I had no walls up. It was just there. Laughing, reveling in the game, just being. Presence.I realized as I traveled down to the shack on Friday that my walls have to come down and the only way they’d come down is if I understood them. So at night, after exhausting rounds of dodgeball and trips to the movies with forty kids, I’d reach my shack late with nacho cheese wiped all over my shirt by the little hands of the kids I love, pull out that mattress, look at the stars, and seek to understand my walls.
I just wanted love to flow as easily as it did during dodgeball. I wanted love to flow as easily as it did when Coke spilled on my new running shoes and all I could do was laugh alongside the kid that did the spilling.
Our walls keep us from so much. From better communication, relationships, and ultimately the lives we want, lives full of love and grace.
So as we ponder building families, taking risks, and embracing love, let’s get to know our walls and bring them down so we can just let love flow.
No need to seek for it. It’s all around. Just let the walls come down.
Josh Brazier is a Certified Professional Coach, an Arbinger Trained Coach, and founder of the Kaiizen Foundation, dedicated to improving the lives of the world’s orphaned and vulnerable children population through mentoring and education.
His mentoring company, Kaiizen Mentors, is helping youth and families in the States live better lives.
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