Identifying Your Treasure

On this Solstice night, I am turned to the most bedrock pieces of me - those things that make me who I am. I am 42 years old (EGAD!) and I can tell you true, it was not an easy thing to identify my personal foundations. At the threshold of child to woman, I felt the hands of my ancestors pushing me out the door - "Go, make a life for yourself. Go Become Someone." Not at all humbly, I obeyed. I raced out that door, looking back only to wave confidently, "Goodbye, Goodbye, you'll be so proud of me!" Neither I nor those who literally sold the farm to pay the price of my freedom truly saw the road ahead. We'd all swallowed the wicked vow.

Grandparents were certain they'd earned my reward through Great Depression, World Wars, mechanization and mass media. Their children had been given the 50's, the promise of social security, pensions, and the microwave oven. Parents never looked back, trusting the promise of ever increasing value of stocks and real estate, assured by the college degree that marked us children as Achievers. "Go" they said, "And go again. Keep climbing, don't look down. This is what we fought for. Give us something to brag about." And all of us, politically correct young men and liberated young women went out to claim our pre-packaged, instant gratification, money-back-guaranteed birthright.

Among this flock of lucky heirs, I unconsciously committed a high crime with serial frequency. I'd not left everything behind me after all. Like a hidden hereditary heart condition, the need for connection pulsed with increasing urgency. I longed for recognition in my peers' eyes - that deep knowing that comes from living in each other's backyards generation after generation. I didn't realize it was lost to me in this world of Achievers from all lands. So very many are refugees. Temporary. Without permanent relationship to people or land.

But I am lucky. I carry in my heart a bright, solid memory. I remember being loved, I remember loving, I remember being real with a story, a myth in my heart and solid, fuzzy, scratchy, icy, sparkly home all around me. It is the best place to start looking for your Treasure: What has endured all these long years of lessons and experience deep in your memory, in your affections?

What do you remember about being young, being small? Try to find a scent memory, a song memory, and a touch memory. How about a weather memory or a travel memory? Is one of your senses dominant in these snapshots? Can you expand the scene by reaching out with another sensation? Even if your memory seems to be of a negative experience, try to notice more about the details: Is there something or someone you are hoping will help you? Is there something you are wishing you had the power to achieve? What kind of food did you like or totally dislike, what were your favorite games, chores and hard work, regular clothes and special outfits, holidays and particular family traditions? Always try to reach past the Thing you remember to the sensations that linger around the memory.

Jeff puts this exercise bluntly, "I spent the second half of my life trying to forget what I'd learned in the first half of my life and now in the third half, I'm trying to find what's still right for me." There was a time for every one of us when we believed we could do anything, could be anything. Long before we accepted that while what we loved could be a hobby, certainly, we would need to support ourselves first, we believed in being happy. If you can remember those first loves, those first moments of "I'll never forget this," I promise you will find clues to a Treasure worth recovering.