Such a Little Life

After two days of class and multiple introductions and chances to tell our stories at acupuncture school....I'm wondering if I have lived a big enough life to be here. There are 15 people in my class, 10 of us are "starting from the start" the others have done some sort of acupuncture training in other states and will be taking classes to meet the requirements for New Mexico licensure. And they all have a varied and colorful past.

One young woman (I'm guessing still a teen) has lived most of her life in India and found acupuncture here "destiny" as she comes from a family of healers. She has spent most of her life being medically cared for by naturopathy and acupuncture - it is essentially her life.

Another student is a man I'm guessing to be in his 40s - lived in a Zen Temple in Japan for a number of years. He told me that he has always had a zen way of life and said that at four years old a family friend asked him to go hunting. His response to this friend, "I'm not supposed to kill anything in this lifetime." My question...how do you have this kind of direction at 4?

One of the women just finished Acupuncture school in New Jersey recently and opened her practice. Two weeks ago, she said she decided she wanted to move to Santa Fe and get licensed here. She's back in school to study the chinese herbs. IN 2 WEEKS TIME, SHE MADE THIS DECISION!!! WHAT!! She's very colorful! She's thinking of moving to a place about 45 miles away from Santa Fe, in the middle of nowhere!!!! Oh My Gosh - I can't imagine living in the wilderness as she is thinking about. There's coyotes out there - ya know!!!

And today, I visited with another young man in my class who is a chemist and has invented some sort of solvent that cyclists use. He's patented this solvent and it's on the market...an inventor no less. He's also a new father. His baby boy was at the school with him for awhile today is 9 weeks old and absolutely adorable! I asked the child's name and he said something like "Tasaki" - who is a Hindi Deity, who rides a tiger backwards, has 10 arms, 10 legs and carries swords to fight off his enemies. I tried to google this Deity - but couldn't quite figure it out!!!!

One woman state that the first half of her life, she was a "selective mute". Since that time she has lived in multiple cities, including New York and is a weaver, artist and grows her own food. She is happy to be back in New Mexico and is working the soil on her farm.

And this is just a small snapshot of my classmates - so I say, what have I done with my life? Yes, I served in the military and yes, I've been a massage therapist for many years and hope that I have touched a lot of lives with this work. But I don't feel nearly as interesting or colorful as some of these stories. I hadn't anticipated this part of the journey! And at the same time, I think all of this diversity is what makes the journey so powerful. I hope that where some of my classmates are light and airy, I can be the stabilizer; where they are intellectual, I can be the voice of reason and together we can be the Yin & Yang!