Casting Acorns

Today, I gave a homeless man outside Costco some money. Little does he know, he has an oak tree to thank for that. Well, the tree and a friend of mine.

In an effort to stay in shape, I frequently run. The other day, as I trotted along a dry irrigation ditch in drought-stricken Central California, my route took me under several beautiful Valley Oaks. I thanked them for their shade as I basked in the cool air they brought my journey. This time of year, my footsteps are very crunchy and the footing is a bit treacherous as vast amounts of acorns are underfoot. In some sort of some sort of Quercian act of faith, the trees fling them out every year uninvited, blind to of what the world does with them. And the world takes them in. Thousands of potential new oak trees hit the ground every year; baking in the sun, getting crunched by pedestrians, eaten by squirrels, or rolling off into pavement and getting run over by cars. Maybe one in a thousand actually gets planted and creates a new tree. But that doesn’t stop the oaks. They provide food for animals and soil building materials. They may not go to their intended end, but they go to a use. Every last one.

I have trouble with this. I have trouble with unconditional giving; especially giving love. I’ve gone to a lot of twelve step meetings to get to the point where I can let someone live their own life without trying to control it, but I still want to control what someone does with what I give. As I mentioned in this entry, I tend to look for acceptance before venturing out with anything, and love is no exception.

A year ago or so, a friend of mine and I were enjoying a late afternoon in San Francisco. Life just doesn’t get much better: coffee shop, a wonderful city, wonderful company, and time to chat. As we sat at a table outside, a homeless man walked up near our table, laid his sleeping bag out, and proceeded to make his bed for the night on the sidewalk. This is a pretty common experience in San Francisco, and I was inclined to just ignore him. He had chosen his journey and he didn’t seem dangerous, just looking for a safe place to rest. As I mentioned, years of counseling has trained me to not try to fix people. With peace in my heart, I felt able to allow him his lot in life and enjoy mine.

My friend, however, was not willing to ignore him. She watched with growing discomfort as he tried to settle into his nest. As we finished our coffee and prepared to move on, she did something that put me to shame: she walked over to him to offer help. At first he jumped as she touched him on the shoulder, but her gentle voice full of love coaxed him into taking the money she held out.

My initial reaction was to mentally discount this bit of generosity from my friend. I thought about enabling: traditional recovery wisdom holds that the sooner someone is allowed to hit rock bottom the sooner they are motivated to turn life around. Odds are, if you give someone like this money, they will just go buy drugs with it. But that just didn’t sit right with me. Her gentle spirit was so true and her touch brought such beauty to an ugly corner of the world that I couldn’t shake what I had seen.

My friend is one of these oak trees. She is able to cast herself into the world, lovingly, with no strings attached. She didn’t hand that money out with restrictions, but she did attach love to it. Who knows what ripple effect she started? I love her for that, and want to be like her. Her action reminded me that I am on this planet to connect – not to dictate what that connection builds.

I think I have confused love with acceptance. I am living in an area that I don’t like, working at a job I don’t like and I somehow have allowed that dislike to creep into contempt. The heat, dust, and dirt of the Central Valley, the conservative political climate, the lack of cultural amenities, the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy at my job, have all become reasons to hold myself back and nurse a false sense of superiority. I am terrified that if I embrace where I am at in life, I will settle. I am terrified that if I accept who I am right now, I will cease to grow. I am terrified of being trapped.

But when I practice self-love, I suddenly see possibilities open up. When I expand that love to my world here and now, I connect, and I understand the only thing that can trap me is my bitterness and negativity. This current place, no matter how difficult for me, is part of the same world that has beautiful places for me. If I accept it all, love it all, it all becomes available to me, and I become worthy of it. After all, how can I be closed off and bitter, and offer anything on stage?

So now I practice. It is not my call to decide what the homeless man outside of Costco does with the money I gave him. It is my way of acknowledging that the world is whole, it is generous, and I am grateful. I am casting acorns.