The Knowing

As I lay facing the bare sterile white ceiling of the medical examination room, many thoughts rushed through my mind. Was I healthy? Was I going to find out that I was ill? Would this procedure hurt? Why didn’t I prepare myself for this?

My mum has laid on a hospital bed being prepped for surgery far too many times. She has stared up at ceilings in two different hospitals and had to contemplate life and death. Mostly death as time and time again, the doctors told her and us that she was not supposed to live, or rather she had a 50–50 chance.

In times like this, no action could make a difference. She could not undo all the years of eating a certain food or living a certain lifestyle. She could not exercise now to redeem herself from the situation at hand. She could and I could only stay, feel the fear, breathe and allow someone else — divine or human to help, to save, to redeem the situation. It was not surrender, it was allowing. And whatever happened next, we will deal with it then.

There is a courage under fire that we have lost in this more affluent generation in most advanced countries. That split second decisions that would have impact that changes or ruins lives. Almost every physical need is handled and we trust the food we eat and the people who provide most of our basic necessities. The “Knowing” muscle as I like to call it, thus gets less practice. It is this muscle of deep belief and certainty despite anything that may be seen in the world. It is the conviction of a leader who says we will have to fight this battle despite what losses we may sustain because this is the battle we have to fight. It is the hope against hope of a mother who watches her sick child in the hospital and just knows in her heart of hearts that her child will live. It is the desire in each of us when we know … that is the country we want to visit and learn more about and contribute to…. or that is the person whom I will marry. The “Knowing”.

I have not used that muscle in some time. Forgotten its power. Ignored its power. Pretended to be lost, pretended to be open to options so I do not offend people who offer me options. But the “Knowing” is something so powerful a force in our lives, so grounding an experience that to deny it is to deny our own inner wisdom.

Yesterday, under bare sterile white ceiling of the medical examination room, I knew without going through the procedure. I knew the results. I have always known the results. The only reason why I needed to take the tests was to show them to others. To the doctors who needed to know, to the people who will need to know in order to plan things with me, and for me not to find out, rather to confirm what I already knew.

I am so awed by this Knowing. 
 I am so humbled by it.

My traveler explorer French guy friend in LA is in his twenties. As people new to LA we like to share our experiences and also to explore LA together. He is always telling me I should go and see this and do that and I always tell him, that’s not for me. I “know” that I don’t need to see or go to that country, that is not my calling, my mission. If it is so that I visit that country for work or by chance win a trip, I will visit it for sure… I am not anti- the country or the action or the person, I just “know” more and more now what is for me and what is not. I told him perhaps it is a by product of age, I have seen and tasted and experienced and so from that I have derived a criteria of sorts to see the world and my place in it? He is younger and needs to keep trying and seeing for himself… but I reminded him that his “Knowing” also exists as he chose to be in a lower paying internship now rather than his high flying sales job in France because he just KNEW it had to be.

Come explore your Knowing with me … it is life giving and life changing… and it is time you know too.