My tattoo told me to do it

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about life these days.  Forty-six years old, and I still haven’t figured it out.

This is frustrating, because I’m smart and usually a quick learner.

I feel like I’ve read all the manuals and have all of the information.  I just haven’t been able to put it into play.  Yet.  (That’s me trying my best to be optimistic.)

Recently, I’ve been staring at one of my tattoos.  I got this tattoo — my second one — when I was 40 years old.  The Chinese symbols for love and fear sit on the inside of my left arm.

Chinese symbol tattoos are great because you can tell people that they mean pretty much anything.  Example: I told my mom and dad that my tattoo meant “most esteemed parents.”

When I was in my twenties, I read Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love, and it changed my life.  Basically, Williamson said everything in life can be distilled into two things: love and fear.  We either choose love or we choose fear.  It’s as simple as that.

I guess it’s the choose part that I wrestle with.  Always choosing love would mean letting go.  And that’s been my life-long struggle.  Letting go of control, pride, arrogance, being right, grudges, stubbornness.  Did I mention control?

I wonder what it would feel like to just let go of it all.

It seems scary and crazy … like jumping out of a plane without a parachute.  But maybe it would be freeing.  And maybe I wouldn’t need a parachute if I wasn’t so loaded down with everything that I cling to so rigidly and tightly.  Maybe I could actually soar on my own without the self-imposed burdens that I carry around like a three-piece set of old-fashioned luggage filled with the ghosts and dead bodies  of my past.

* * *

We went to W’s family reunion today.  It was the first one without her grandmother, the beloved family matriarch.

After the reunion, we drove out to the cemetery to leave flowers and pay our respects.  W cried on my shoulder.

When I asked her why she was crying, she told me that her grandmother was so important to so many people.

It’s true.  She was a guiding light to so many.

She certainly wasn’t a saint.  She was a human being with her own flaws and frailties.  But she always radiated immense love.  I never heard her raise her voice or speak negatively about anyone.  She practiced kindness and compassion, patience and understanding.

I was always struck by how peaceful she seemed and knew deep in my heart that she had figured out this thing called life.

She never needed any tattoos to remind her how to act or how to live.

But maybe my tattoo is the reminder that I need.  A reminder to always choose love.