Paddle Ball
...metaphor...
Being misunderstood is one of the risks of being so open, so generous. Loving without condition, like its as abundant as air, offers all the space.
We plant seeds, leave trails of breadcrumbs and popcorn. When the popcorn gets eaten by one who chooses another direction before their integration becomes self-nourishing, it leaves a big space of very tender curiosity in the innocent heart that longs for harmony.
What do they think they’re missing? What hasn’t been provided? Their jealous hunt for what they think they want, seemingly outside of them yet shining unseen like a beacon from within, stokes an unhealthy fire in their cells. It burns too fast. Too hot. The body suffers. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Innocence never anticipates the notion that “more” would be “better.” Quelle surprise! Why?
What a potent teacher jealousy is, that blinding hunt. Once it launches, that need ripples and ripples, overtaking all focus. It dominates movement and direction, flying away from, or maybe toward. But the thirst for “more” just creates more thirst.
Love will unclench your hands. It resumes freedom. Love will unclench your mind, with no conditions or ulterior motives. It offers everyone the freedom to fuel up on the popcorn and bread crumbs and be drawn to unseasonably dry watering holes, if that’s the current siren’s call.
The uniqueness of humanity lies in the drift we call “free will.” In its simplest understanding, free will says you will always have the opportunity to go against your highest self, to choose, act and create in a different direction than your innate nature. Humans are the only ones who have that. It’s the uniqueness of our species that is simultaneously, and ironically, the generative space of creation. The drift is the gift.
Love will always be as abundant as air—maybe more so—the love of your heart, of your being, of the world reflecting yourself back to you. The love of all of Creation is the space within which free will exists. Humanity will always be free to finger paint in the notion of its absence. It is a power that no other species on this planet can exercise. We get to walk in harmony with life, or turn away.
Seduced by short bursts of the intoxicating thirst for more, free will finds justification to explore who we are not. What love is not. Collectively exploring, humanity bounces off of itself, one free will pushing against the next, fighting to prove one’s existence as a unique expression of life that no thing can deny, fighting to prove what already existed in harmony before the seduction.
The drive to be unique draws together groups of people who are all trying to prove uniqueness in just the same way. Proving is loud, attention seeking, and if it’s not getting what it wants, proving can become violent, internally or externally.
Who is willing to be the most violent? Are they the ones who realize “more”? Love offers endless space where they are free to become that violence—free will gets to play itself out in every fractal.
How far will the rubber-band of free will stretch away from love until the stretch is too much for the heart to bear? The rubber-band inevitably snaps back, rattling the powerful identity that says, “But I wanted power, not love!”
It bounces back and forth for a while like paddle-ball—free will is the paddle, experience is the ball, and love is the elastic opportunity to play. The drive to prove one’s power propels the lived experience, stretching love as many times as it needs. Love waits patiently for curiosity, not for “how do we get more”, but for “why do we want more?”
Why continue to share love when misunderstanding takes up most of the air in the room?
Why use violence for power when love eternally defies any perceived need for control?
If you’ve ever gotten to that sweet spot, where you have the perfect awe, the rhythm and pressure that launches the rubber ball, and the jealous elastic clings in response to your arm pulling back away from the ball, whipping it back to the center of the paddle, then launching itself back into the stretch again like it knows what it’s doing, and you are just watching that magic happen right in front of you in a way that couldn’t happen without you … you might have a sense about the “why”. Life is truly mesmerizing. Some people try and and say they’re no good at it, resigned to a life without paddle ball. It’s understandable.
Paddle ball might be one of the most simple and innocent and enjoyable games we’ve created for ourselves. It’s understandable that some walk away, not understanding that a little rhythm and playful innocence can reveal all the answers.
Once you feel it, you can’t un-feel it. Feeling it means now you know you have it, and there is nothing to prove, nothing more to get. You can put the paddle ball down with a sweet exhale and welcome the next game.
Expand Into A Relational Definition of Intelligence
Were you able to join us for the 2-hour Unspeciated event on October 1st?
Check out the Unspecieated 3-Part Mini-Series, beginning on November 3rd. Follow this link to courses.kerrilake.com to learn more, watch the Oct 1st event replay in the Free Preview, and include yourself in a new paradigm of how we engage with intelligence!
This is so beautiful 🙏❤️