Have You Been Lost?

When I came into after Thanksgiving and a workshop - having been gone for 5 days (they all knew where I'd been), I was greeted with "Have you been lost?"   Well, my western hackles went up...  "No, I told everyone where I'd been and.... and... and...  " The comment hit me as a little sarcastic, like my mother used to ask, when I'd not written for a while (remember written letters?) "Well, did you break your arm - you haven't written...blah, blah, blah"

Then I remembered soon enough to save myself from total humiliation, that ,"Have you been lost?"  or more literally translated, "You have been lost?" is a traditional Ugandan way of saying "Oh - you've been gone a while!"  No sarcasm intended, not accusatory, just "Hey - we've missed you (or noticed that you were not here)!"

Such are the cultural land-mines one faces, and I find it is more of an opportunity to get face-to-face with my own foibles than anyone else's.  When I came here, part of my quest was a spiritual one i.e. "Who am I in the absence of trappings, marriage, family, house, career and other shields to hide behind?" So I had to laugh at how easily my insecurity about "being late, not being responsible, etc. ad infinitum"  was triggered.  And after that is a whole list of other trigger points that really come to the surface when one is a stranger in a strange land.   One of  those is the concept of "us" and "them."  That one is interesting, because in one field of thought, each of us is but one aspect of the holographic universe and as each of us evolves, the planet evolves.  In the opposite direction, any time any one of us casts a negative aspersion on someone else or ourselves, we all are impacted as one organism. Sort of like the experiment where one plant's leaves are burned, and it is registered by other plants in the same room even though they were not burned.

Another great expression which creates a bit of a stir is:  "You've been sleeping around?"    (Uh-oh...)
That one really means, "Oh you slept somewhere else?"  (Whew!)

I could go on, but my mood has shifted as has circumstance since I wrote this 5 days ago and I'm wondering if anyone else felt the burn I got on my foot Friday night.  No one????  Well - there goes my theory.  More later.