Mis En Place

Noun, singular:  French term meaning ‘everything in its place’

You know that map in the mall that helps you find the way to your next shopping destination - the one with the big red dot labeled “You are here”?  Well, without that dot, the information contained on the map is somewhat useless. Wouldn’t you agree? Especially if you are in a really big shopping mall with multiple floors and it’s the holiday season and there are one bajillion people all trying to buy last minute gifts and you just want find one thing but had to park on the opposite side of the mall because the parking lot was full and then there’s a baby crying somewhere in the food court...  (can you tell that I have just described my own personal hell?) My point here is that until you are able to locate that red dot on the map, you can’t really be certain where you need to go. Sure you can meander through the mall and by trial and error, you can probably find your way to where you want to go. Nothing wrong with that approach at all. But what if you just want to get to where you want/need to be? And what if you want to take the most direct route to your destination to avoid the crying baby in the food court? Well, then you better get a plan together and it should start with you locating that red dot on the map so you know how to interpret the information given to you.

The same can be said about any journey you take in life – you have to know where you are before you can move forward.  And more importantly, you have to have some idea of where you want to eventually end up so that you know which routes to explore and which you should avoid. That’s what my focus for 2013 has really been all about – putting everything into its place so that I can move forward with purpose and clarity.   

So where exactly is “here”?  To help explain this, I will quote one of my favorite movies, “I believe we have two lives:  the one we learn with and the one we live with after that.”  Based on that quote, I guess you could say that “here” for me is somewhere in between those two lives.

I have successfully made it through the first life – the one I had to learn with - and by successfully I simply mean that I survived. Yes, I managed to make it to the light at the end of a very long tunnel, but make no mistake; I did not, or was not capable of, thriving. So, I emerged from that life with deep scars and no real sense of purpose and I was beaten down in every sense of the word – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I met some of the most wonderful people as a result of that “learning life”. And for those reasons, I don’t know that I would want to change a whole lot about it. I realize now that this insight comes only after having a few “transition years” under my belt that have allowed me to muster up enough courage and strength to acknowledge this.

But, now I can feel myself shifting from the “transition years” to the 2^nd life. And while it would be nice to say that I started the 2^nd life with a clean slate – that is not the case. I still have to take ownership of the disasters I created during the 1^st life. I have a lot of damaged terrain to navigate through and Lord knows that I’ll probably be paying off the financial mistakes I made until the day I die. But the 2^nd life offers something to me that the 1^st life skimped on - the opportunity to control my final destination and more importantly to have a say in what path I take to get there.

Part of the purpose of this blog in general is to help me figure out what I want out of this life. And to be honest, because I have never really had the opportunity to ask myself this question, I have adopted the trial and error method of exploration. (Hence all of the random things on my Do-Over Life List) But recently, I have been looking for more specific answers to this question. For me, the only way to narrow things down is with a list. In addition to the list along the right side of this blog, I also created lists of things that I wanted for the core people in my life (family and friends) and how I saw myself being involved in or contributing to those things. And then I made a list of the things that I wanted for myself, which I referred to as my Selfish List. This was the list that I struggled with the most. But I held up the mirror and really thought about what I wanted/deserved, and then I shamelessly added it to my list.

I read somewhere that “intention is defined as a desire without attachment to the outcome” and that is what the Selfish List became for me. I put out into the Universe a list of exactly what I wanted for myself and then surrendered control of the outcome. By removing the attachment to the success or failure, the items on the list simply became part of how I lived my life and, over time, I started to notice that everything that I had added to the list had either already come true or was well on its way to coming true. Every. Single. Thing. Needless to say, after that realization, I started making lists for everything! The power of intention is something that never ceases to amaze me and if you haven’t read into the subject, I highly recommend that you do. Because then you learn that “when you really want something, all of the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” God bless you, Paulo Coelho.

In making these lists, I quickly began to notice they all had something in common. My lists told me that the most important thing to my soul is my family, my friends, and eventually finding love. While the 1^st life provided me with the amazing friends that I often write about (friends that have basically became my family), the “transition years” provided the opportunity for me to rebuild the relationships with my family members that were lost to the bad decisions that I made during my “learning life”. At that point, it became clear to me that part of what was missing in my life was finding love. My soul needed its mate.

Red dot on the map? Located.

Final destination? Identified. 

And just like that, everything started to fall into place.

The process of finding my soul mate began with trying to figure out what qualities that person needed to have in order to fit well into my life and, twice as difficult, what qualities I wanted them to have in addition to that. Needs and wants. Needs and wants. To the shopper at the mall, it would sound like this: I need boots and a wool pea coat AND I want the boots to be under $50 and I want the pea coat to be teal. <---someone fall.="" i="" loves="">

So, on April 1, 2013 at 9:45pm I created a word document called “Crazy in Love” where I listed all of the things that I was looking for in a soul mate. Here is a good portion of the list that I made:

  

• Patient
• Kind
• Passionate
• Compassionate
• Funny
• Adventurous
• Loyal
• Supportive of my passions
• Wants children
• Loves to travel
• Creative
• Hopeless romantic
• Playful
• Love for sports
• Close with their family
• Amazing friend
• Loves to read/write
• Protective of me & our relationship
• Ability to make me feel safe emotionally/mentally
• Likes to watch movies/snuggle
• Likes to be active & will encourage me to be active
• Loves me for who I am, not who they want me to be
• Not afraid to tell the world they love me, over and over
• Someone who is not afraid to try something new (food, travel, experiences)
• Someone who can make me laugh hysterically every day
• Someone who values late night conversations
• Someone who chases me around the bedroom with passion and gusto!
• Someone who is more financially stable than I am
• Someone who enjoys “culture”
• Someone not afraid to pursue their passions regardless of financial gain
• Someone who can cook
• Someone currently attending or graduated from college
• Someone interested in life-long learning
• Someone who loves to be near the water

You get the idea…the list went on and on. Anything that came to mind at all, no matter how fantastic the idea seemed, I added it to the list without hesitation. It was like flipping through a catalog and saying, “I’d like some of that and a little of that and I can’t live without that!” The sky was the limit. When I completed the list, I put myself “back on the market” in a variety of different ways – some of them were incredibly bold and others were more subtle, but I was making a conscious effort to be 100% open to the idea of finding love again.

In love, timing is everything. Sometimes the would-be-soul-mates paths can cross, but if the timing is not right, they can brush past each other without a second glance. One person’s strategy for finding their soul mate will be to look to the right – when really all they need to do is look to the left to see that the person has been standing there all along. My Grandma O. has always said that I am one of those people that have to learn all of life’s lessons the hardest way possible. So for me, when it came to finding a soul mate, not only was the timing wrong on several different occasions, but I was also looking to the right when I needed to be looking to the left. Now, throw in the fact that I am incredibly dense when it comes to noticing when people are interested in me, and you can probably see how frustrating this whole process was.

In the end, I think that the Universe grew tired of me failing to “embrace the obvious” (remember that mantra from a previous blog post?!?) So the Universe just plucked me from the path that I was taking, then placed my soul mate directly in front of me and firmly pushed us together.

I have always believed that the best love stories are those that begin with a friendship that evolves into more over time. My own love story is blessed enough to have this type of beginning. Danielle and I have known each other for more than 1/3 of our lives. She was in the trenches with me during some of my most difficult struggles and she has always been one of the first to celebrate with me when things went right. She has always remained someone whom I love, respect and trust. But I have always only considered her just a friend. One late night, while ordering chicken at a restaurant called Sol Food, I put my arms around her waist and hugged her and things immediately fell into place for both of us. Given my history, I should have known that I would have found my soul mate at a restaurant called Sol Food.

Not wanting to jeopardize our friendship, and quite frankly because the idea of us being soul mates seemed “too good to be true”, while walking along the beach the next day I asked the Universe to confirm if Danielle was my soul mate. The Universe responded in the form of heart shaped rocks washing up on my feet at 3 different beaches in the Bay Area. Almost anticipating that I would again question the Universe’s answer, Danielle then presented me with a heart shaped rock that she had found while walking along on the same beach saying, “I found this for you.” From there, we have “slipped briskly into an intimacy from which we have never recovered.”

A lot of people have asked me if I am settling in my search for love because I found someone who already fits into my life as a friend. The answer is no. I’m not settling for one thing when it comes to love. Re-read the above list of things that I was looking for in a soul mate as “things I have found in Danielle” and you will understand that I have everything that I have ever wanted or needed or deserved in a relationship. And with each passing day, my love for her grows exponentially. I am exactly where I need to be in my life. I am home. Everything is mis en place. And with the continued love and support of my amazing friends and family, I’m ready to begin the next chapter of my life with my best friend and soul mate by my side.