Today I went for coffee with someone I have not seen in 25 years. I wondered if we might have anything in common now; have anything to talk about; if it might prove to be painfully awkward to carry on a conversation with her. We played field hockey together on the B.C. team 29 years ago. Now, she has knee problems and can’t play and I don’t play anymore due to a lack of interest and my own personal pride so we don’t share that sport in common at this time. I wanted to hear more about her life and I am a good listener so I inquired about the path she has taken and there were a lot of interesting things that she had done with her life that she told me about. She had traveled all over the world and used her education and training to get positions in other countries like Australia and the U.K.. She had worked in different hospital wards as a registered nurse in different types of wards- emergency, ICU, and others.
She had even gone the route at age 37, when faced with the reality of being single and wanting children, to sign on for artificial insemination from a ‘matched for her donor’, get subsequently pregnant and have a baby on her own. She figured that prince charming may not come around nor was he going to make her life complete so she followed her own inner promptings and created her own highly fulfilling life. I was sitting across from her and I realized she was beaming with happiness. She was simply radiant like the morning sun. Her daughter was now nine and she was very comfortable being a single parent. I came away from having coffee with her comparing my own life to hers and feeling somewhat empty in comparison. But what really struck me was that F., it appears, has been living in alignment in her life for a long time. I only talked to her for a few hours but that is what struck me most about her.
I have written a book about living in alignment. In fact, most of my conscious life has been spent figuring out, contemplating on, reflecting on, speaking on and even teaching workshops on this very question of living in alignment. I have taken numerous meditation classes, enrolled in spiritual workshops, have read many relevant spiritual books on reaching your personal potential, have gone in and out of flow in my own pursuit of alignment repeatedly and yet here she was, in seeming alignment without any conscious effort on her part or measured intention even. What I gathered was that F had trusted life, did not fear life, rather flowed with life. She may not have trusted that someone would come into her life and thus took matters into her own hands but she trusted life enough to realize that she could create the life she wanted to live and followed her own path of alignment in the process to get there. I found this to be simply remarkable and inspiring to be honest. I wish this for myself every minute of every day and for everyone who reads this post to thrive and find your own best life living in alignment with your own unique self- your happiness really depends on it!