It is a new day, a transformation, a metamorphosis…………..

Of course every day is a new day, but only occasionally are you afforded the space which creates the opportunity to become completely renewed.   There have been two such times in my life when the opportunity for renewal has been so trans-formative that I really do consider it akin to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.  The first was after my two years of junior college at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA.  It was spring and I was still hanging out with old friends from High School.  My years of school leading up to that had a been somewhat traumatic.  Since third grade I had been teased for being overweight, and no matter what I did and how hard I tried, I could not seem to shake the stigma.   It was not all bad, there were plenty of good times too, but I didn’t have the confidence to seriously date and I was very shy and unsure of myself.   There are three bright spots – I was good at baseball in my junior high years, I became a scout leader and an eagle scout in high school and  I also got a varsity letter on the tennis team.   In retrospect, these were nice accomplishments, however I would have traded them all for either being a rock guitar god, or being thin.  Because even in high school there was a senior calling me jumbo almost every day.   All that did was make me want to go home and eat.

So you are probably thinking, OK, what changed in junior college?  Well, first off I started working out regularly and I was at an age where it was easy to put muscle on.   So I got a little lighter but a lot more buff.  But my transformation was more complicated than that.  I had applied to and was accepted to UC Santa Barbara.  My parents were very supportive of me going there.  My mom even went back to work to earn extra money to help out.  That was huge!  Another thing that happened was my best friend from high school who was also a drug dealer got arrested.  It was odd, but I was on my way over to his house to hang out and as I drove by, I saw him and his house mates led out of the house in handcuffs!  My first thought was “what if I had come over an hour sooner”?   Would I be in cuffs too?    Although I felt bad I also was very clear that my friend had created his own destiny.  Immediately after, I was thinking about my Zen training and the Koan, “Who am I”.    From that point forward it was all about creating a completely new persona in Santa Barbara.    I worked out, I lost weight, I joined a  volleyball league and prepared myself for being a butterfly….   and it all worked out beautifully.