treatswords

What a treasure it is to experience something in life. It’s hard, a lot of times it hurts and breaks something we aren’t sure can be repaired. An experience teaches us about ourselves, they are reflections. Tiny mirrors that scatter along the wall. Sometimes we like what we see and sometimes we don’t, but either way, we learn something. Many experiences are frightening, they bring out the monster from under the bed, fangs dripping, eyes yellow, and we have to decide if we are going to run from it or do the hard thing and decide to learn from it.

In my 26 years of life, I have learned an awful lot. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is, to be a great listener. With listening has come learning. I have learned so much from listening to my friends. They have taught me how they handled a certain experience, how they chose to tango with the monster. From this, new ways of growing were taught. New perspectives, fresh ideas. What worked for them may not work for me, but heck, it was worth a shot. When a solution presents itself, I think it’s best we take it for a test drive. Loop around the mountain side, top down and if we didn’t particularly find it enjoyable or helpful, we park and return the keys.

This blog series came from this idea of listening and from a quality in myself that has always been there.

I am a sharer. I enjoy sharing stories from my life and from others. I get a rush of adrenaline when a conversation presents the opportunity to share a really great story. I come from a family of story-tellers, so it is a natural gift. I want this blog series to be a place of sharing. I want to share the experiences of the brilliant people in my life. To me, they are all experts in something. It only takes a few simple things to become an expert in my mind.

1. You go through something
2. You learn something
3. You have a natural talent for something
4. You have a deep passion for something
5. You obsess over something

If you can check any of these off my list, then you my friend are indeed an expert.

I reached out to a few of my friends to pick their brains and capture their expertise in a jar so that I could take it with me and share it with others. A mason jar filled with the ingredients to make perfect chocolate chip cookie? No thanks, I’ll take the jar of valuable experience from an expert please.

I sent a few texts saying something along the lines of:

“Hi. You are an expert in blank.  Can I send over some interview questions on the topic for my new blog series?”

Most responses stated:

“I am not an expert…. but sure.”

And to me, that response was the beauty in this blog series.

Sometimes we don’t see the value in what we have to say. When we speak to a listener, we don’t see the little aha moments they have in their mind. We don’t see the goosebumps they have, the way their heart races, that moment when things just, click. We don’t see them on their drive home, running the conversation over and over in their mind, playing with it, shaping it to fit into their own situation.

What we have to share is powerful, it matters.

After sending out the questions I had to my friends, I awaited their responses. At first, I did so almost impatiently.

I went over to my friend Steph’s house to take pictures of her for the blog. I had sent her some questions and she had not answered them yet. Before I left her house, I asked her, “If you had just one piece of advice on the topic, what would it be?”

She stared at me, panicked.

“Like right now? You want me to answer that right this second?”

I left re-learning a lesson I could never quite get the hang of. Great things take time, she valued me and my time enough to take her time with this. What she was sharing was a little gem and I was over here, shovel in hand, trying to dig it out before it was ready to be removed from the soil.

Impatience never did anybody any good.

When I did receive my first set of answers, I was anxious to read every word.

I read through the list once, feeling each word, finding myself having many, aha moments. I read it a second time and wept. I was staring at a screen that contained something so valuable, it should be put in a glass frame and hung in a museum. I felt honored. Here these words were like the Mona Lisa to me, and I had them all to myself. I wasn’t sweating, at the back of the line, waiting for the crowd to move forward so that I could marvel at these words, ingest them, dissect them, leach what I could from them.

I held the mouse in my hand, the email in my inbox. For a moment, these words were mine to keep.

But that would be selfish and as stated before, I believe in the power of sharing.

Here is my collection of rubies for you to marvel at, to flaunt on your fingers or around your neck.

I will warn you; they will move you; they will sparkle just right when you allow them to. They may even heal a small hole in you.

But I hope you do not keep them.

Absorb what is helpful and then let them go.

Become a sharer.