awareness boosters::going places you don't wanna be

There's alot to be said for facing your dragons once in a while, just to remind you how life is on the flipside. I landed in Amsterdam today for a 19 day training and coaching stint for different clients in the country. I am coming in from 28 degrees and endless summer days in the southern Alps, where I live in a tiny village that isn't even on the GPS. Even though it's 10 minutes from a big city, you can see the milky way and millions of stars, and there is NADA noise at night. Just silences. And crickets. And the sound of our dog, or me, or my partner snoring... I live there with the feeling that the quiet makes me healthier, in that "The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything." 

Until I go on a business trip. So here I land, in 17 degree grey Netherlands rain, and enter the swamp only to be dragged along by the crowds in the station, squashed on the train, run over on the bike paths, crushed on the bus. I have to drag my 20kg case up 3 flights of extra long, miniature sized, 45 degree-angle stairs (more like ladders), in a typically quaint Dutch home that makes me realize that if there were a fire, good luck trying to escape! I collapse into my room, ready to chill, only to be greeted by great bonking woofer and subwoofer powers of BASSSS BOOOM BBOOMM, rendering me completely deaf, by students having a party next door.

That's when it just hit me like a ton of bricks. What the heck am I doing here? This is truly the Bangladesh of Europe. There is privacy. I pull the curtains on the creep staring into my room from 2 meters away (his appartment window looks right into mind). My mind starts wondering. How can these tall beautiful and hip people stand living on top of each other like this? Does no one else feel as claustrophic and stressed out by all this intensive people presence?

Aaaah, thar be dragons. I'm talking BIG dragons -- on the inside of me, which come out at moments like these. I don't like loud noises. I am over sensitive to fireworks and lightning claps, let alone boomboxes. So what's to like about the situation I'm in?

Just before my mind hit panic fever pitch, I remembered one of those nice little laws of the Universe. As to why I'm here. For almost 3 weeks, no less. Yes. To learn to live with this. As in, the greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. Now and now. Even if I have been living in peace and quiet and should have plenty of reserves to handle some sound overload, it all means nothing when you are actually in the situation (she writes as an ambulance blares by, sirens wailing).

So tomorrow when I go out into the dawn rush hour, and tramp through more grizzly rain, I will smile and "let go" with it. Ok you dragons, step on. I'm ready to dance! Speaking of dance, check out this wonderful riverdancing violinst and his  buddy, a couple of comedian classical musicians whom I saw live at the Vevey theatre yesterday. Here's how to deal with random acts of trouble in your life! 

Smiles, Madelon