I love the person who took the slogan “Visualize World Peace” and amped it up a bit to say instead, “Visualize Whirled Peas”. It makes me happy. I know I can take myself way too seriously sometimes and I certainly believe other people can as well.

My mom and I recently talked about how we come at things, most of the time, in comparison to how other people seem too, as if we come from an entirely other planet from Earth. For instance, I can be really empathetic towards other people and care very deeply about them. I can want the best things in life for people too but I just cannot stomach saccharine sweet slogans and mottoes and ways of being. You know, such as “visualize world peace”. Don’t get me wrong, I so want there to be world peace and I believe in visualization, it’s just that I seem to notice people who don’t really have their heart or actions behind that (or other similar sayings) more often than not. You know, kind of like someone who has NAMASTE (when you and I come together there is God) as a bumper sticker but curses out a driver when they almost have an accident. That kind of thing.

During lunch today with one of my best friends, we had a deep discussion about difficult incidents from our past. She is such a gentle dear soul, the kind of person who you just want to give bunnies too (not the real kind, but the trinket kind). She’s only about 5 feet tall if that, so she is already like a little doll and then to go with that she has this huge heart that makes her eyes regularly brim up with tears for you if she is touched by your story. And she seems to be touched quite a lot! Anyway, what I found interesting about our story telling was that we’ve shared similar situations in our lives, both as a child and an adult, yet she sure responded to them differently then me. I suspect our visualizations are different as well.

For instance, I used to have a huge, huge, HUGE phobia about flying. Before each flight my stomach would get into knots, I would have to constantly try to tell myself positive things, I would say every prayer I know (and I do know quite a lot) and then just white knuckle it through the whole flight. There was this one time in particular when I was flying with my husband and a group of friends and one of those friends was as uncomfortable with flying as I was. So, we supported each other throughout the flight with looks of concern and love, etc. etc. and told each other that we would be sending out positive thoughts and visualizations for each other during that flight.

When we finally landed, after kissing the ground, we shared our visualizations. My friend had this beautiful, soft visualization of a gorgeous big angel surrounding her with wings and lifting any negative thoughts that floated up into the air above her hair and blowing them away gently into the ethers (I can’t help it, I always here Judy Tenuda singing in the background during this part…)

I was almost embarrassed to share my visualization.

Because I do concur with the idea that thoughts are things and can be powerful (especially in cases of keeping an airplane afloat) my anxiety took that idea to new levels which manifested in believing that I had to keep those thoughts from getting out to the ethers to reek havoc so I imagined this like tan-flesh colored helmet thing that fit over my head with these wire things that captured the negative energies and thoughts…..I recognized that I was not that far off from some of our favorite mental patients that we would see wandering the streets of Austin every now and then, I know….! This is just one example to show you the kind of mind that I have to work with and embrace! I can tell you that I cracked my friend up when I told her which really made me very happy that my crazy thoughts can bring pleasure to someone. There’s that at least!

That loving feeling does eventually come through with lots of meditation and letting my heart expand (and truth be known, better living through medication as well)..but sometimes the only way I can get to feeling safe enough to open up my heart is to laugh at my thoughts and other’s thoughts and the absurdity of it all!

So, if you can visualize world peace, well do it! Just do it. And for heaven sakes, if you can’t then visualize whirled peas and have a good laugh with yourself. There’s more than one way to crack open a heart!