"THE ART OF BECOMING YOUR GREATEST SELF: Try on a new way of being, thinking, and responding to life and it's opportunity" (sic)
The ad for the event continued:
"Become an observer of the magnificent as you willingly participate in activities that gently reveal conditioned ways of being that may not be serving your highest good. I caution the weak stomachs out there considering this flavor of new culture.....Here is where the infinite value of self recognition comes back 10 fold- your reward for your bravery and ambition... Greatness! It can only be recognized by one who knows it's origin." (sic)
The meetup was hosted by a woman who called herself "Starlight" and who said she accepted donations "for her ongoing efforts to manage and deliver her greatest service from the gratitude of an opulent life of wondrous experience and skill set to share from." (sic)
I wrote down the time and date and location. I have been challenging myself this month to go to ten meetups, to get out the house and talk to new folks and push my boundaries. Do something different, you know. This was different.
And isn't that what we all want: to become a better person? I know it's what I want.
I went to the meetup and tried to find value in the assorted activities. A half dozen of us listened to Starlight describe her personal journey and career successes. I tried to not be annoyed by Starlight, who burst into wordless song to describe how the color orange felt to her. Later I would look up an online profile she made where she said she speaks in tongues, but under languages spoken, she listed, "light".
We actually all said what color we would be, which Starlight questioned loudly, her face close to each of ours in turn. "What is blue?" What is water?" What is swimming?" "What is freedom?" "What does freedom DANCE like?"
It felt fake and forced, but what did I expect? What kind of person goes to an event knowing that he or she won't like it just to tear it to pieces afterward? Besides arts critics, that is?
Near the end of our time together, a woman with wavy white hair blurted out, "This is all well and good, but it doesn't help me solve any of my problems." We snickered uncomfortably. "How do I quit smoking?" the woman went on. There was no answer, but instead Starlight had us do one final exercise.
We paired up. I was matched with Starlight's much younger husband, a guy who would try to sell us his new line of "superfood" nut butters before we left. Per instruction, we looked into each other's eyes and each took a turn saying a word over and over and over and over and over and over and over -- more than 100 times. My word was "failure" and his was "lonely". It's hard meet a stranger's gaze for that long. Our tongues started to mangle the sounds.
Avoiding eye contact with Starlight, I departed the meetup feeling less like my greatest self than I did when I arrived.
A week or two later I went a much different meetup, an annual community gathering on the 69th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki three days later). Called Lanterns for Peace, the volunteer-run event at Tenney Park allows for remembrances of the victims of war and expressions of hope for a peaceful, nuclear weapons-free world — similar ceremonies take place in Japan, Hawaii, San Francisco, New York and other locations.
Now I know the answer. This is how we'll become our greatest selves:
We'll gather at a park shelter at dusk, and listen to each other, and sing along to "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and "Blowin' in the Wind," and fold paper cranes, and leave a few dollars in the box for the Physicians for Social Responsibility, and remember the atrocity of the atom bombs, and wrap our necks with blue scarves in solidarity with women in Afghanistan, and write messages of peace on paper that we'll assemble into lanterns, and we'll head out and set our newly lit lanterns afloat on the lagoon, and walk over to the other shoreline as the sky darkens to look at the lights on the water, and think about what nonviolence really means, and we'll return to the shelter, and a man and a boy in a canoe will bring back the lanterns with the candle flames now extinguished, and we'll disassemble them, saving the foam bases and wooden sticks for next year, and a guitar player and violinist will play "Wagon Wheel" and "Blister in the Sun," and we'll say what a beautiful night and what a well-organized event and look how many people came out and thank you.