>Hyannisport. Mid-May, pre-season Cape Cod. The multi-million dollar home is a stone’s throw from the Kennedy Compound; its lawn nuzzling the Atlantic Ocean expansive enough for six shoulder-to-shoulder croquet matches. While relishing in the surroundings, post shower one afternoon, I wrapped myself in the softest towel I had ever experienced. Wanting to procure it for myself, I looked at the label: Neiman Marcus. Of course. Later I researched: $135 a bath towel. There were seven grand worth of towels in the house alone.
My ex and bestie is one of the greatest of all time, but he doesn’t have a mind for logistics. Or rather, he doesn’t have MY mind for logistics, which when thrown a potpourri of information will have it immediately organized, people inspired and bossed around, and all data cross-referenced and color coded in detailed printouts with back-up digital copies on the always carted Blackberry, just in case.
So when his family bid on the aforementioned private mansion at a charity auction and were unable to use its seven bedrooms for a week away, natch I was called to step in and figure out who went where. We weren’t quite given enough notice allowing peeps to plan proper vacation time off, so it became a hodge podge of guests; a puzzle of room arranging that required (in my mind) spreadsheets.
The bestie and I had just departed from a “woo” weekend workshop when we learned of the house. Needless to say, we were particularly open. I ended up inviting two people to join our vaca who were strangers pre-workshop. One was tall, gorgeous Katie. She radiated. I literally thought: Amazon woman, Greek goddess. Katie seemed like too confining a name for such epic female form. She and I complimented each other in the bathroom and came back to our seats only to find we were sitting side by side. We watched each other pull out a green juice from our respective bags with a manicured hand, at which point I looked her in the eye and said, “We’re going to be new best friends.” Once I found out she lived close to me on Perry Street, the deal was done.
Her own bestie in tow David was a handsome, quiet man with an unwavering groundedness and one of those bodies that is incredibly well cared for. (That’s the PC version of: really super yoked.) We didn’t speak as much, but in my mind, I grouped them together. I immediately adored the outgoing gal, and by default, trusted her entourage. They were shortly thereafter invited to the Cape with ten other friends.
In the road trip up, I gave the breakdown of that weekend’s guests to the guy I was dating at the time. (This was a fairly new relationship, and he did get mad props for being game to join. A dozen people he didn’t really know? Our first weekend away in a house that was provided by my Ex-husband? Creative and spiritual types that he had absolutely no close relationship with in his own world? Mad props.)
That being said, once I mentioned the two new additions to our group, he pretty much told me he thought I was out of my mind.
“You mean, you don’t even know these people?”
I looked at him, all puppy-eyed and innocent (a recently cultivated look,) “I’ve never met them, but I know them.”
(Hm. Now looking back on it, this might have been the moment that the relationship took a turn toward its expiration.)
“Wow, I just don’t know anyone who would ever do that.”
“That’s how we roll. I can see they’re good people. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, lucky for me, so this story may somewhere, sometime veer near a point, only the best happened. Katie and David turned out to get gold stars for the weekend; their generosity was bountiful. An unecessary boon to all of us, for sure, and a windfall that was not even karmically mine—the house after all had nothing to do with me, I was merely the company manager for its arrangements.
After a couple of days of David and Katie’s general fun-loving magnanimous attitudes and deep awesomeness, even the guy I was with admitted, “I misjudged him. I’m touched that he would be so generous without knowing me.” The guy was given a book from the local Barnes and Noble and some excellent free therapy that he was enthusiastic about at the time, but that I’m not sure he ever heeded.
David and Katie grew to be good friends in separate ways. Katie was always great for a bright smile or a no frills soul excavation, and made the cut to the short-list roster for a “girls night” crew—my own “pink ladies” of Manhattan. I began to work with David as my network chiropractor and his insight and wisdom continues to floor me every time I think I can get away with a choice that’s less than what I ultimately deserve and he calls me out on my own sneaky ego-ic b.s. When I needed a space for my first Goddess weekend workshop, he offered his office flatiron loft with a generosity beyond measure: “It’s your first time, just give me whatever you want for utilities.”
Unbounded generosity from a heart-centered hunch and a pinch of faith. This… this is how I would like to see the world starting to work on a large scale. What if we trusted people more? What if we left places/spaces/events better than when we found them, to hold the integrity for having faith in that trust?
Jim Carrey spoke recently about how the “news has the media condense all of this negativity in one place and is not representative of what the world is, or what the world wants.” We have a misperception about the goodness of life. People are starting to shift that perception, because celebration is truckload of a lot more fun. Call it a vanity of self expansion: Faith makes you prettier. Integrity offers peace of mind. Generosity keeps the flow of abundance open.
Financially my friends run the gamut. There are a few who are by anyone’s designation: wealthy, most are very well off and then I have peeps who have given up the exec life opting for something simpler, and those who have yet to get to that place they deserve in terms of prosperity.
I’ll tell you this much, what I see first hand, is that happiness is directly equated to what you give. Rich or poor, retired by 40 or juggling a day job to support a higher artistic vision, the people who give are shinier, happier people.
You can call it “pay it forward” “you give what you get” “as within, so without…” it’s not how much do you give, it’s DO you give? And in what spirit do you give? Reluctantly, because you feel like you should? Do you take into account how much others around you have and make up the difference because you know you can afford more? If money isn’t flourishing, do you give in other ways? There’s no wrong, it’s not a quiz, but really… look… do you give?
Money is just energy. It’s all just consciousness. And as all the “good” work we try to do on ourselves is not a one-for-one exchange, neither are the karmic backlashes of those times we remain tight-fisted out of “reason.” Greed, apathy, hoarding, these are unconscious exercises that lead to cancer, shutting down, a hardening of the heart. Our media only exacerbates the situation with it’s constant fear-inducing dramatics. Turn down the volume.
I’ve been (pardon the pun) on both sides of the coin. Even very recently, taken out by friends when things were tight, and I have in the past gratefully footed the bill when I know it’s tough for someone else. But it’s not about money is it? It’s about love, and with a card, a phone call in hearing someone out when you really have ‘better things to do,’, making the choice to put someone’s needs in front of our own when it may not be the comfiest response… what you give is what you get. When you gamble on the good, life will not let you down, and cultivating generosity will morph it into a natural practice.
The people who own that insanely awesome Cape Cod house are hugely active philanthropists. Their home (it was at least their 2nd, maybe even 3rd?,) covered in family photographs of smiling faces. They have the formula figured out, and you can see it in the walls—there is no end in sight to the richness of their lives. Prosperity consciousness always starts from within. Heart to hearth, that’s the path.
