Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [10]
The thing that makes the Jacuzzi, the money, the love, or anything that you may desire to have or experience in your life worthwhile, is your willingness to clean up the crap. Most of the time, it’s not even your stuff! It could be something that someone else dropped off in your life. It could be something that you picked up because at first you didn’t realize what it was. Sometimes you pick up something, thinking it’s something else, and by the time you realize what it really is, you’ve got a real mess to clean up. Life is about being willing to take your naked body, your most vulnerable self, out of the warm water where you are comfortable and clean up the crap without getting angry and without losing your Self in the process. When you can do that, life becomes a joy rather than a chore. Cleaning up crap becomes an everyday experience that you know you are equipped to handle and that you realize can be accomplished without taking anything valuable away from the real you.
A word of caution. You can’t get caught up in the crap! If you do, you will surely lose sight of the real meaning of life and lose your Self. You cannot, under any circumstances, get caught up in whether the crap is yours or someone else’s. You can’t get caught up in what it looks like, smells like, or how much of it may be piled in front of you. You can’t get caught up in where it came from, or why it keeps coming your way. “Caught up” is another way of saying “being stuck.” You can’t get stuck in the right or wrong, good or bad, injustice or fairness of cleaning up the crap in your life. You cannot compare how much of it you have to the amount someone else may have. Life is like a crap-cleaning test. It is a test that we all signed up for, one we must all take. The best students get the hardest tests. Our only job, whether we like it or not, is to keep a vigilant guard over our lives and to clean up the crap as soon as it comes to our attention. Our ability to do this without getting caught up is what some folks call “success” and others call “personal growth” or “evolution.” My experience has been that, no matter what you call it, the result of cleaning up crap is spiritual growth and development. That was the task that presented itself before me: cleaning up crap. First my doggie’s, then my own.
I cleaned up after the dog, returned to the Jacuzzi, and stuck my toes back in the bathtub—my favorite personal crap-cleaning spot. The water in the tub had gotten cold. I shook my head and smiled to myself. “Does it ever stop?” As I reached over, turning the knob to replenish the water, Rhonda’s thoughts began to fill my head. Why bother? Is it really worth it? How many times are you going to drag yourself through this kind of hydro self-analysis, this waterlogged self-evaluation? Forget about it! Things aren’t that bad. Leave well enough alone.
Suddenly, there were two voices in my mind. Iyanla said, “No! Do it now. DO IT RIGHT NOW!” The bathroom began to steam up from the hot water as I refilled the tub. It was a definite sign. “Trying to make it through the fog again?” As I asked myself the question, I realized just how much I had grown. There were days when I would leave little things in my life undone, or half done, in fear of making someone mad at me, in fear of losing their love. There were times when I would sulk and cry about what I thought someone was doing or had done to me, believing that I was totally powerless to do anything about it. In many clever ways, I had allowed myself to duck and dodge unpleasant situations in my life to avoid confrontation.
This, however, was not one of those days, times, or ways. I was choosing not to live like that any longer. I had spent enough days reflecting on