Everything In Me Said Cancel The Crepe
A middle-aged man with a mustache looked at me defiantly and said, "No, you're not. You don't care." And he walked away.
I had apologized for stepping into his path in a crowded creperie, twenty minutes into a wait for a crepe I'd had an instinct to cancel. I was sorry. He decided I wasn't, and then he took it a step further and told me so.
It left me feeling anxious and small.
That morning I was sitting on the porch looking at the mountains, drinking my tea after my daily meditation, reading my novel for a little while because I like a slow morning. And I said, out loud, "I think I'll just stay home to have coffee." Then I pictured the iced latte from the crepe place I'd found the last time I was in the mountains, and I got in the truck.
It was a long wait because it was busy, and when I heard them tell someone who ordered after me that it would be twenty minutes, maybe more, everything in me said cancel the order.
I wanted to get back and start my day. But I'd been feeling a lot of pressure, and there's an aspect of me that thinks I have to keep a certain schedule and be perceived as productive. Perceived by whom? I don't know. There's no one watching me except the dog. But the belief runs that waiting twenty minutes for a crepe is a waste of time.
So I stayed and ignored the pressure. I kept my order in place, and I sipped my latte while I waited.
The space is small, and it was far busier than I expected, and there isn't really a good place to stand if you're waiting for something to go, so I was doing a lot of shuffling around. I saw someone in my periphery, moved to get out of the way, and moved directly into this man's path. I apologized. I'm so sorry.
Feeling small in reaction to other people's emotions has been a bit of a pattern for me, and it's interesting to watch, because there was a time I wouldn't have been affected at all. Some of it is personal growth and some of it is a protection mechanism I've been slowly shedding. It's still unsettling.
This isn't the first time a man has decided that about me, and in my early twenties he'd have been right. Somewhere in between I lost the ability to apologize with nothing behind it, and now a stranger gets to decide out loud which version he's looking at. It was very hard to let go of.
Either he was having a bad day and taking it out on me, or he's lived the kind of life that lets a man look at a woman and tell her she's lying about her own feelings. That's some bold behavior, and it isn't how I'd talk to a stranger in public or on the internet either.
People are on one
A message came through after all of this, while I was still turning it over.
People are on one. There are stretches where the energy brings out the worst in some people, where it pulls up bad behavior and unfortunate thoughts and hands them to whoever is standing closest, and we happen to be in one of them. We're not to take it personally.
We're also not to respond in kind, which isn't always easy. But it isn't worth our energy. That's really the message. When someone's rude to you, when someone cuts you off in traffic, when someone tries to troll you on the internet, it's best to just move on. Don't acknowledge, block, ignore.
The other side of that is if you're someone who tends to perform through snark, this isn't the time. It's going to be taken very seriously. Snark and sarcasm, particularly in writing where tone is hard to read, aren't going to land the way they used to. They may not again, if I'm honest, because the energy really is changing.
So as you're noticing how you talk, how you respond, and how you receive what's laid out in front of you, take a deep breath and consider what your highest self would have you do. We're still human, we still have emotions, and we're still going to have in-the-moment reactions. It doesn't make us bad or wrong. But the more mindful we can be as we move through the world, physically and online, the better, because we all need a little more presence and a little more patience.
There's a part of me that wishes I'd stopped at that man's table, where I heard him being rude to his friends, which is how I knew he wasn't joking with me, and said, "Sir, I actually was sorry, and I didn't appreciate that comment." But it wouldn't have gone anywhere. What I really wish I could have changed was how long it stuck with me. How long I felt small and insecure and like I'd done something wrong for standing in a room while I waited for something I ordered.
I walked in already full
Here's the part I keep coming back to. It stuck because I walked in there already full. I'd been carrying a pressure that was never mine, plus the hurry of every person crowded into that little room, and there wasn't much space left in me by the time he opened his mouth. When you're that full, you take on whatever a stranger hands you, and you can't tell whether the bad feeling belongs to him or to you.
None of this is what I sat down to write. I'd dropped in that morning specifically to ask my guides what I was meant to write about, and it wasn't a story about a man in a creperie. But it does belong here, and not because of anything he did. I sat on that porch and heard myself say I'd stay home, and I drove into town anyway, and every uncomfortable minute that followed is what ignoring my inner voice cost me. When I asked The Lightwing what I was meant to share, they said, "going your own way."
You can change directions at any time
Earlier that morning, when I did my daily meditation and asked for a message, I received this:
"You can change directions at any time. It's ok that what used to feel right now feels less aligned. As you grow and change, your preferences, dreams, and desires change as well. Forcing yourself to stay in a city, town, career, relationship, or practice of any kind because you feel some type of way about time invested or others' perceptions is a waste of energy. Be delighted that you've had the experiences you've had and know that there are skills and lessons that will apply to your next chapter."
When I asked The Lightwing why “going your own way,” they said that if time is collapsing, then why not use it as an opportunity to move in a new direction?
By collapsing, I mean the distance between deciding something and living inside the result of it is getting shorter, so the long stretch you'd normally brace for between here and there isn't what it used to be. I went into all of that in What's Going On With The Energy if you want the longer version.
What's happening right now is that the energy is moving in a way no one alive has experienced. This isn't the first paradigm shift humanity has gone through, just so we're on the same page, but it's the first one anybody currently breathing has had to live through. Which means nobody actually knows precisely how things are going to work.
So it's okay for us to take steps on a different path and feel unsure about the outcome. We're supposed to be having an adventure.
The systems are coming down
The way things have worked isn't working anymore, and that's an experience many of us are having.
I have a tendency to come into things right as the ship starts to go down, and I can see it even in how I came into working for myself online, because there has to be a dramatic shift toward more in-person, in-community work.
What we'll start to see is the breaking down of the systems and structures and the way things have always been. That includes the tried and true frameworks and steps you see coaches, healers, influencers, and everyone else touting. What worked for them, how they did this, how they made X amount of money, how they went from here to there in thirty days. Those are all starting to come down.
And the people who built those pathways and benefited from them are dropping off, which is making way for a new way of operating to come through.
I can't tell you what that is. I can't see that far, which is always interesting and a little disconcerting. But I always know it's because I'm not supposed to.
Which means the framework you've been waiting on, the one that would tell you whether to leave the job and in what order and by when, isn't coming. Nobody's holding it. That's not a loss; it just changes where you go for the answer.
Step out of the container
The point is this. If you're inside a container that's been feeling stale for a long time – the job, the city, the relationship, the whole way you run your days – it's okay to step out of it. In fact, it's imperative.
I want to be careful here, because hard is not the same as stale, and I'm not telling you to walk out of everything that's gotten difficult. The time you've already put in is real information. It shaped you, and it isn't nothing. The difference shows up in what your body does about it. When something is hard but still yours, your body argues with you; it gets frustrated and loud, and it wants to fix things. When something is finished, the arguing stops, and you notice you've stopped bringing it up to the people who love you, and you can't picture next year inside it at all. That's the one to look at.
The ask is that in stepping out, instead of looking outside of yourself for something new to do, someone new to be with, something new to try based on what other people are doing and how and where they're doing it, you let your intuition lead the way.
This isn't easy, because it asks you to break long-held patterns and beliefs that are deeply ingrained in your psyche and in the way you move through your day-to-day. It requires a change in pattern and habit, and it asks you to go inward more than you go outward.
It's a strange thing to be sharing, since that morning happened precisely because I stayed inside an old pattern. I'd already changed part of it. The slow morning was one: no laptop, no posting on social media, and only washing the dishes I needed for breakfast. But I didn't change the part where my human interaction up in the mountains is a trip into town for a coffee, and that's the part that got me.
If I'd listened to what came out of my own mouth on that porch, I never would have had the experience at all. And maybe I needed to have it. The Lightwing says no, I didn't. But here we are.
What the porch cost me was one morning. I ignored my inner voice for about ninety seconds, and I paid for it before lunch. But most of what women bring me isn't ninety seconds. It's a year of a body saying the same thing about the same job while she tells it to hold on a little longer, because the timing isn't right and the money isn't right and she's already put six years into it. One morning is easy to see in hindsight. A year is harder, because you've been inside it the whole time, and there's no man in a creperie to hand you the bill.
Changing our behavior is hard. It asks us to leave behind something that's become comfortable but isn't bringing us joy, and may even be bringing us a little suffering, when staying in the pattern, the relationship, the career, the city or town or state or country still feels easier. Coming up with a different plan or routine, or leaving a long-term relationship or career, feels scary and unsafe.
But when we make these decisions and move past them, when we take the steps and choose ourselves and choose to go down our own path, even when others perceive it as wrong or dangerous, we create a magnetism that is unparalleled.
And if time is collapsing all on its own anyway, and taking these steps to be true to ourselves and create the lives we really want makes it move faster, do we really have that much to fear? You can make a decision and take an action and not tell anybody you've made it. You just see how it feels in your body afterward and what comes to you next. Nothing's permanent, for the most part, other than the obvious things in life that are permanent.
So why not take the chance? Why not take the leap? Why not go through the discomfort of changing a pattern, a habit, a job, a relationship? It's going to feel unsettling either way.
Otherwise, you may find yourself in the middle of a creperie, getting crap from a middle-aged man who's decided your apology is disingenuous.
The Daily Meditation
The message at the top of this post came through in my daily meditation, which is what I do before I open the laptop or make a single decision about my day.
Here's what's actually happening in it:
You move through each of your energy centers and clear out what you've picked up that was never yours to carry: the absorbed emotions, the projections, and other people's pressure and hurry.
Then you build a shield around your energy field, with a reflective layer on the outside so that all of it doesn't come flooding straight back in the moment you open your eyes.
Once you're clear and shielded, you open the connection to your inner voice and ask for a message for the day.
You don't have to know how to do any of that. I guide you through every step of it. All you have to do is be still and listen.
It's free, and you can do it before the day starts pulling at you. If there's a direction you've been going back and forth on for months, drop in, ask the question you're actually sitting with, and let a message come. Consider it your divine timing check.
