I am I DON QUIXOITE !

8-24-11

Just want to give a ‘shout out’ to all my new Pillar of Light friends.  I can’t sufficiently say how much you have made a difference in my life.  I hope to show you as I break through my mountains of doubt in the next 9 months to write my book and start giving seminars- to live my impossible dream.  You have truly changed my life.  Thank you for your wide arms of love and support.  It is just what I needed to be able to do this.  I love you.

“I am I Don Quixote” !

I just went to an amazing seminar by Jonelle Hughes.  She was great, but even more amazing was how she taught us to find answers within ourselves though journal writing.  I knew it was powerful before, but she said what I had believed.  She said many of the things I had been collecting in my heart to share with people, but she did something about it.  She had the faith to trust that her inspirations would be a source of strength for others.  She has truly inspired me and I am going to find a way to go vertical and overcome my mountains of fear through faith. 

One of the greatest lessons I learned from Don Quixote, that we didn’t even really get to talk about at the seminar, was in the way we see others.  It all has to do with the way we see our self importance and the way we value others because we know our own value within.  I love the line in the movie, Man of La Mancha when they play-write is introducing the role for the fiancé of the niece.  He says about this man that he “holds his own importance as if it’s going to break.”  That makes me laugh, because I think at one time or another we all do that.  I can laugh because I see it in myself, maybe more past than present.  Anyway, I wondered “Why do we do this?  How do we let go of it?  If the greatest commandment is to love God above all else and love our neighbor as myself, then how does that apply here?”

It was very ironic that we should study the lesson of “Pursuing a dream in the face of ridicule” because I have felt this my whole life.  I felt like I lacked the power to do what my inner voice tells me to do and live my dream because I felt the lack of support from others.  This is a victim mentality that keeps me waiting; keeps me from action and doing.  You need to understand that I feel there are holes in my ‘love bucket’.  Sometimes my focusing on the problem keeps me from seeing the ways others are supporting me.  Instead I see the ways I think or feel they should support me.  My conscious mind knows that this is an unreasonable expectation.  I am trying now to learn to see the ways others are supporting me (especially my husband) through their frame of reference, and to let go of wanting (or expecting him) to speak my love language.  I believe my perspective can change everything.  The morning before the seminar I saw in my husband that I wanted him to be happy for me to go to a seminar, or happily or volunteer to watch the children.  That is my unreasonable expectation.  By the time I came home that evening either he had had a change of heart, or I had come to see him differently- because he was very different to me.  Still I am working to find the things he IS doing to support me, so I wrote a list: 

Helped me clean the house yesterday

Cooks almost all of the meals in our home

Fills my van with gas (he sees this as his role)

Works to support our family

Sometimes does laundry and dishes when I get behind or overwhelmed

Did laundry and dishes for the most part by himself for the first 7-ish years of our marriage while I was learning to put family first and get my priorities straight. 

I want to learn to accept him whole-heartedly for what he IS now, and stop expecting him to be something else.  So you may be asking, “What does this have to do with Don Quixote and how we see others?”.  This is the lesson that I am learning:  Don Quixote didn’t see people as they are in the here and now.  He didn’t see with his natural eyes, he saw with spiritual eyes.  In fact, he blatantly ignored what his squire said was real.  He saw things and people for something more than what others did.  His squire, Sancho the realist, saw a windmill; he saw an evil giant with 5 arms.  Sancho saw an Inn.  He saw a castle.  He spoke his high expectations of what he believed in, but accepted the behaviors of people as temporary.  My favorite is the kitchen maid, El Donza.  The very first moment Don Quixote sees her he puts her in the role in his mind of his High Born Lady who he does great deeds for.  He does not see that she is a whore.  He sees with his spiritual eyes her heart.  He loves her deeply and from a distance  despite her coldness, and holds her in high esteem regardless of her actions.  She is his Dolcenea.  He saw in her what she had lost hope to see in herself long ago.  He wants nothing from her as every other man does.  He only wants to do great deeds in her honor and be allowed to serve her.  He does not expect her to do anything for him in return.  To me Don Quixote is a type of Jesus Christ.  I agree with the reality that Don Quixote "selects from life the reality he chooses to see".

The world sees only what can be seen.  They take no effort to look deeper and learn the truth. When we see someone’s unlikable behavior in today, it is easiest to write it off with a judgment.  Like the guys that follow El Donza around.  They act like dirty rats so it is easy to write it off and say that that is all they are and all they ever will be: rats and thieves.  The label and our belief in that label keeps them there.  Don Quixote did not see them as his enemy until they threatened his Dolcenea.  He did not see them as worthless, but making a bad choice.  Choices can change and people can too.    He said it was his knightly duty to go bandage up their wounds.  He still loved them, even though he just beat them to a pulp.

If I am to live as a Don Quixote, I will believe in others when the world says they are worthless, fight those who would choose evil, and dauntlessly pursue a worthy dream in the face of any ridicule.  Being a Don Quixote to me means that I have this belief in my others, and more importantly in myself.  Even if the world does think I am crazy, it matters not because God sees greatness in each of us and it does not matter what anyone else thinks because He is the Greatest of us all. 

 

From Man of La Mancha

“Oh the trumpets of Corinn have called me to rise, Yes the trumpets are calling to me.

And where ever I ride my staunch at my side, my Squire and my Lady will be.

I am I Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha!  Our destiny calls and we go.

And the wild winds of fortune will carry us onward, Wither so ever they blow.

Wither so ever they blow.UTube version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMH7qkgViVs&feature=related