Amsterdam

About a decade ago, age 25, I found myself tooling around Amsterdam in the freezing cold December winds, with two male friends.  We had just spent six months working in England at L'abri, a Christian artist retreat center. We went to Holland for a last little hoorah before heading back to the states. On this specific night in Amsterdam we were lost, I was cold, and being cold and lost is the perfect brew of crank for me.  Oh yeah, and somebody spilled a beer on me earlier in the night as well.  Cold, lost, crank and wet. Good times. I think I was complaining about something or other when Sam, my friend, stopped in the middle of our aimless amble in the red light district, weary of my whining, took my hand and said, “Ang, Be. Here. Now.”  

“I don’t want to; that’s the problem,” was my curt response. 

He smiled, comfortable in my honestly, and gave me a well you are so deal with it look. I knew he was right. And, of course I didn’t WANT to; I’m justified, right?  I mean who wants to be in the skeezy red light district in the middle of winter, with soul-searing shamelessness (which dials in as sadness for me) all around: pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, peep shows, a sex museum, a torture museum--not really the leisurely bike rides through tulip fields stretching out to Anne Franks little attic hideaway that I’d envisioned, when signing up for an Amsterdam trip with the guys.  I wanted to be anywhere BUT that moment.  Strangely though, Sam settled me.  I remember doing a quick self-assessment: I was pissed at no particular somebody, just the dangling carrot of my tulip expectations.  I remember challenging myself to stop complaining. My mental check-in went something like this: I’m cold.  Okay.  My pants are wet with a beer stench.  Okay.  I’m with two young guys hopped up on all the red light decadence and perversion. Okay.  What else? It was as if there was some clever mastermind behind my protests, not even willing to settle on a check mate.  It was all true and still God gave me the big so what back.  Not a so what, I don't care but rather a so what about this can we not handle? Or perhaps a so remind me again about your entitlements? 

Slowly Sam’s words morphed into a lovely nugget of wisdom that I’ve since remembered.  He wasn’t suggesting that I pay for a peep show and get stoned by virtue of “when in Amsterdam” rhetoric, consequently being someone that I’m usually not.  But rather, he challenged me to just relax and let go of that which was out of my control.  We were there.  And there were no plans to leave anytime soon, it was early in the night. (A little sidenote – there was a small rat in our hotel room, so I was freaked to go back to the hotel alone.  Yeah, it was a great trip!) So there was some tough self-love and a big dose of let go let God that needed to happen.  I did need to deal with it, reckon with the reality of my situation, as Sam, in his unassuming insight, pointed out. Ultimate freedom would’ve been to gracefully accept it.  I can’t remember if I got all the way to acceptance.  But I did chill out and let the guys have their mostly innocent fun without being the judging naysayer or their self-appointed conscience.  They were smart young men, not responsible to me.  Or for me.  They were really good friends and I knew they wouldn’t let anything happen to me. (They didn’t want to go back to the room and deal with the rat either.)  

In the end I sauntered around the red light district, letting go of my own dis-ease the best I could, realizing that most of the people around me were much more lost than I.  It turned into a sociology experiment that I actually, on some weird level, enjoyed.  Or at least found interesting.

This is true freedom: when you (and when I say you, I mean me) have the ability to regulate your own anxiety, self-soothe (versus expecting everybody else to make you feel better) and realize that being in the moment, even if the moment totally blows, is not the worst thing. Worse is resisting the moment and slapping a pissy, self-entitled mood on a less-than-ideal situation.  That just adds insult to injury. 

This is the long version of my last entry, perhaps the difference between ego and soul.

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