A New Year

Greetings from me!

Hello!

Right now I am in Sanya, China.
Gazing at the sea, I feel the rhythm of nature, in which everything is carried along by the flow.

I found myself wishing I could simply move along with this lovely rhythm, and at the same time, I remembered how much of this year I spent going against it: trying to make things go my way, feeling impatient, unable to stay in the "now."

Many waves of opportunity came my way, too, yet I let them pass with excuses like "I cannot do it" or "It is not time yet." Those, too, surely had their identity. I am sorry.

As 2018 draws to a close, I am truly grateful for so many gifts: what I was given, what I let slip away, and what I pretended not to see. Thank you for appearing before me and giving me the opportunity to clean.

I am packing now to go back to Japan. On the way home, my suitcase is only half full, and from that I feel that, little by little, I am being sorted out.

In 2019, I want to keep my plans and schedule as open as I can, and look forward to letting whatever happens simply happen, changing along with it and riding the flow.

To everyone who reads these letters, and everyone who has come to Betty's Room, thank you for sharing your wonderful changes and reflections.

Why not start 2019 by feeling the colors and the rhythm that only you can bring?

Everyone Is Doing Their Best

At the SITH Ho'oponopono Basic 1 Class held in Sanya this time,
there was another coordinator, so I simply took part as staff,
through cleaning.

I was sitting at the back of the room,
and in the same row was a mother attending with a little girl of about one.
The baby was crying all the time, and the mother seemed to be struggling with it,
going in and out of the room.

At first, I was simply cleaning.
What memory in me is creating this situation?
What memory in me is making my heart react to this situation in this way?

As I kept on cleaning,
I felt a strong conviction: "My role here, as staff, is to clean."
And I noticed that this strong conviction, rather than being inspiration, was the kind of feeling that stiffens the shoulders and makes the breath shallow,
a feeling that was not very comfortable.

Then, cleaning.
And as I went on cleaning,
"It has to be this way."
"It must be like this."
that way of thinking grew lighter and lighter,
and then my body moved naturally,
and before I knew it, I had left the room and gone over to that mother,
and though I did not understand her language, I had taken the baby from her.
The mother looked into my eyes and, reassured that something that was meant to happen was happening,
went back into the class on her own.

As the baby, the first I had held in a long while, soothed me,
I remembered raising my own child,
remembered how hard things had been for my daughter when she gave birth for the first time,
remembered my love for my grandchild, at times almost too strong,
remembered the days when I was married,

and I cleaned on each of them,
then took in the whole presence of the Chinese baby in my arms once again,
and went back into the room when the baby stopped crying,

And so the cleaning went on in many ways.

During the break, in the hallway outside the classroom, the girl's mother ran into the girl's grandmother,
that is, the mother's mother-in-law. Later, when I asked the staff, I heard that
the mother-in-law had said to the mother, "I cannot believe you hand your child to a stranger and sit in the class yourself,"
and had stormed off somewhere, furious.

Then, after the break, in the same natural flow, I once again took the baby, who would not stop crying, from the mother, and to change the air,
this time I went out to the lobby of the hotel where the class was being held.
And there was the baby's grandmother from earlier, suitcase in hand, checking out!
Thinking that the angry grandmother had packed her bags and was going home,
I hurried to stop her.

I called an interpreter who spoke Japanese and Chinese down from upstairs,
who interpreted for us at a quiet seat in the lobby.

It turned out I had misunderstood.
She was checking out that day anyway,
so she had simply left the room early.
She had planned to wait somewhere until the class was over.

I apologized for my misunderstanding,
and then I said,

"I'm the one who insisted on taking this baby.
The mother only reluctantly let me look after her,"
that is what I told her.

Watching her grandchild, who was still crying, the grandmother looked a little sad.

I simply kept cleaning.

"I just don't have the energy," the grandmother murmured.

And I remembered something I always feel, too:
that I want to play with my grandchild more and more, but I actually have less energy than I imagine,
and that this makes me very sad.

"Me too. It's sad, isn't it?"

I said to the grandmother.
And she said,

"The truth is, I want to look after my grandchild so much more.
But my daughter-in-law finds fault with everything I do and won't let me."

There was no anger in it,
just one defenseless woman honestly speaking her heart,
without a single thorn.

I laughed and told her honestly,

"Your daughter-in-law does look like a strong person.
I recently got a daughter-in-law myself, and honestly, my feelings are mixed."

At that, we finally laughed together,
and, opening up a little, agreed that grandchildren are so adorable.

And I said,

"Times are changing, and that can be confusing sometimes,
but when we got married, when we had our first babies, it was not easy for us either, was it?
Let's try to treat our daughters-in-law as warmly as we can, thinking of them as ourselves back then."

At that, the grandmother was smiling, too.

Before I knew it, the baby had fallen asleep in my arms.

Wanting to bring the sleeping baby into the class, I hurried back to the classroom,
and there was the mother, taking the class with a calm face I could never have imagined when I first met her.
Taking her sound-asleep baby from me,
sweet and gentle, like a painting of the beauty of mothers all over the world,
she glowed with a soft, round light.

The class came to a safe close.
For me,
it became a truly special class, one in which I could meet the free and natural rhythm within me that comes into view as I set my roles aside.

I, too, am usually busy, with little room to spare,
chased by my roles at work,
and I rarely do anything like that, let alone do something so naturally.
So I believe this was a gift
to me from Sanya and the class.

When I stepped out of the class,
the grandmother from earlier, the mother's mother-in-law, was waiting outside.
The two of them naturally accepted each other's presence,
rejoiced at being reunited with the baby, and walked home together.

At the very end, I playfully tried to hold the baby once more,
and the baby, perhaps thinking she would be taken away from her mother again, started crying,
and turned to her grandmother for help instead.
Seeing this, the mother and the grandmother looked at each other and laughed from their hearts.

Everyone is trying hard and doing their best.
But because of all kinds of memories and the ties of the past,
there are quite a few people in this world who cannot understand each other.

Most of the time, we do not even understand ourselves.
But when we gently take off our shells of pain and the roles we play,
and trust the rhythm that comes from within us, the truth comes into view.
True peace of mind returns to our lives.

Enjoy!

B

The photo is of the sea at Sanya, at the southernmost tip of China, which I visited for the last class of 2018.
It is a beach.
It was so quiet that, beyond the sound of the waves filling everything,
I could hear the ceaseless changes in my own rhythm.
Thanks to that unique rhythm I never tire of, I felt I could stay there for hours.
Having grown up in Okinawa, I found the sea breeze and the warm, humid air comforting, just as I always do.
Thank you, Sanya.

(2018/12/22)