Giving-Making People Happy

So today I am deciding to be silent because I can feel my voice needs it as does my soul. I so love to please people. But instead of beating myself up about it I am going to explore the love part of it. I know all the rest, the part about me needing to please other people and how that isn't healthy. But public servants make it their life's work to please, they exist to be in service to others. Now intellectually I know that the balance is that this giving does not take away from them it actually expands them. So I am not sure my role in service but I will explore that part that loves to give; the part that expands me. Just to have a lookie lou.

I perform partly because I love to see all those joyous smiles out there. It brings me joy. When I see fans crying I do not understand it, I am intrigued and want to know more about them. What made them cry? Are they crazy? Are they projecting their love on me am I just a mirror reflecting love back to people. They think its me or something I am doing or any person that is idolized but really it is our own love reflected back to us. Or maybe the singing actually touched them. I know I am touched by words.

I was watching an episode of "Six Feet Under" and this character named 'Daddy' died. Anything about daddy's and death touch a chord with me. So they read this poem at his funeral. Okay its a television show but I was floored. Weeping at the beauty and melody that the words sewed together - like a beautiful piece of lace on my grandmothers couch that was covered in plastic to protect it. Okay I made that part up but if I had a grandmother I figure she would be the kind that would have those lace doilies and she would have a living room full of plastic. The words moved me. Someone's art changed me, echoed the love that I hold in my heart for my father and healed my heartbreak just a little. Did the writer have some experience of pain that he was working through or was he writing for the love of writing. Either way he touched me. What I can garner from this is that whaterver the reason I perform; to get noticed, because I feel alive, because it is cathartic for me to live and learn outloud because that is the example that was mirrored to me every Sunday watching my father work out family differences on the pulpit, or just simply because something touches my soul in a particular way.

I like mothering people. I love to cook. When I cook my food is so wonderfully a part of the creative process and it tastes darn good to! I want to share this goodness with others. I love that they say, "Matt you can cook!!" or "you should open a restaraunt" or "oh my God" and I also love sharing a piece of the God in me with them. This is what I have to offer. I sometimes throw delicious food away because it is too much for me to have all to myself. Part of the love in making it is giving it away- I love sharing my love through food with others. I love that people appreciate what I share.

I enjoy helping people. And again my ego is here as well. Do I feel a bit of "yeah I helped them see that" of course but the real joy comes in the spark that you see in someones eyes as they come closer to home, closer to themselves. I witnessed a live birth once in my life. Not that I haven't cried many times watching "A Baby Story" on TLC but when I saw that baby I was convinced of 2 things. 1. We are aliens (half a joke) 2. That their is a spark of life that is ignited at birth. I have been blessed to see this birth spark many times in my life with people. In audiences, in a meeting room at a Weight Watchers session, in private counsel with friends and loved ones and it moves me, it gives me such joy.

They all connect me to me and me, to the humanity of others; they all connect me to God who is LOVE. Sometimes, not always I feel that when I am doing these things I should be no other place doing no other thing than loving in the present moment as I see fit. Maybe that is the place called heaven.

Be an enthusiast! And.......BATS!!!

So I am not the best editor in the world but on our 15 minute walk home from the train station these birds always jut down at our heads..... uh yeah right!

Check out the video and please become an enthusiast to this blog!!!  It would mean so much. 

Home is where the heart is.

Life is not about where you are.  

I grew up in Willingboro, NJ a suburb about 25 minutes north of Philadelphia and I couldn't wait until I was old enough to get out of the house.  I thought I knew everything and my parents knew nothing.  College for me was more about escaping from my parents than about getting an education.  But an education was what I got.  I was almost raped about 3 times during my 4-year college experience.  Talk about sheltered.  

I thought I knew everything and my parents knew nothing.  After graduation I joined Up With People for a fantastic life-changing but painfully lonely year.  I traveled the world and lived out of my suitcase.  My home being the 80 cities throughout the 13 countries I visited as a cast member and soloist.  As a young adult with my life ahead of me, I took life and every opportunity that came before me for granted.  I lived at home with my parents upon returning from my journey for only 3 months and I couldn't stand it.  I moved to Philly and on my own got myself into more trouble than I can tell in a short paragraph.  I was taken advantage of and betrayed in such a profound way that I am still healing from the pain that my blind trust inflicted on my "divine being having a human experience".  Don't get me wrong I grew as a person and did amazing things.  I started my acting/singing career.  Helped found a non-profit that traveled with kids to Africa and Europe.  I was the Program and Creative Director of this program and literally changed the course of about 30 kids per year's life.  But I had to get out of Philadelphia and to get away from all the dysfunction that my running from my family had created.  It was time for me, time to finally forge my own way so 'California here i come!'   

California was where my father died and I was robbed at gun-point.  My father didn't physically die in California but I was living in California when he died.  I was heart broken, my family- that I ran from- was now missing a significant player and he would never return.  In California I also got a MA in Spiritual Psychology and finally premiered my one-woman show "A Song for my Father". But I still felt cornered and smothered and nothing was happening the way I had hoped.  Everything, though rich with wonderful was costing me a bit of myself.  The opportunity to come to Japan happened upon my path.  Again, I jumped at the opportunity to venture out to new territory.  I needed to get away.  

All of this has taught me that the one common denominator in my life has been and will always be me.  I have been with me from NJ, to Philly, to Africa, Europe and now Asia and that something that is eating away is coming more from me than from outside of me.  What is it?

A lot of people are so in awe of my travels, my life and my fearlessness to step into the world at large and I don't want to minimize anything that I have accomplished or experienced.  I have had a rich and wonderful life so far and hope that it deepens in richness and wonder.  I intend for that to happen.  But I to stand in awe of my friends and family who have chosen to stick close to home or what they know, of their ability to take root somewhere and build something.  Both have their ups and downs and both have their sacrifices.  You loose something in all of it and you gain something no matter the side of the fence you choose.  I am not in the lives of my nephews or my family or friends in the way my heart aches for me to be.  I have missed weddings, funerals, births and milestone events.  I do not have a husband or children to call my own.  My "home" is wherever I make one to lay my head.   Yet I am a global citizen.  I see the similarities that we as humans have no matter the shape, size color, culture or ethnic group we come in.  I can feel at "home" no matter where I am in the world.  I belong every where that I am in the world.  I get to witness humanity in all its forms.  I am lucky in this.  

Here in Japan, in the buzz and murmur where I  don't know what the news, radio, conversation on the train or around me means, I really am in a bubble.  Words have no weight on me and I like it.  Words are used to order food, get directions in the subway but other than that I am ignorant-- and it is bliss.  I don't have to carry the burden of this culture.  But still I feel the pressure of life ebbing down on me.  I must do something, I am supposed to be doing something.  It dawned on me today that while I am pushing myself to do something to be something that maybe just once in my life I should relish in just being me.  Pause in the now of life and give thanks.  What would happen in my life if I took all the external pressures away and just was... well... me?  

What am I running from, or to?  Do I need to know?  Must I put myself under pressure once again to figure things out or should I just be?  I can afford to just be present in the moment for once in my life.  I don't have a husband that I have to rush home and cook dinner for, no children pulling on me as if my body is no longer my own, no one demanding much except that I show up 5 days a week to do what I love; dress up and sing.  Why am I still unhappy in this?  Can I just live in this space and just be for a little while?  Can I allow myself the luxury of watching whatever I want on TV?  Not having to share my space or time or attention with or on anyone but myself?  And why is this so difficult for me?  Why is the green always greener on the other side of the fence?  Just something to ponder.  

Today on the train I was watching on old podcast of the TODAY show they said that the earth could be swallowed up in a black hole.  I felt the fear and panic of all the things I haven't done in life, all that I would loose.  I was reminded of something my mother once said, 'I only focus on the bad things in my life'.  For once I will stop and smell the roses.  Or the cherry blossoms.  

Outside of my window I can understand something.  Loud, very loud Karaoke, amidst children yelling.  Children sound the same no matter the language.  Someone is singing, "We Are The Champions"  off key.  

IT'S TIME

Last week I bought a bicycle and little by little I think I am ready.  I am ready to experience Japan!!!!  It's time.  It is time to explore and see and feel what it's like to be in Japan.  I am ready to leave the comfort zone just a bit.  I think my first stop may be Osakusa or is it Osakasa?  Not sure but I will find out before I get there.  It is a little under an hour away and I think I am ready.  The hum drum of being around so many Americans has taken its final toll.  It is so easy to come to Japan and never leave the US.  I went to Bubba Gumps last weekend.  You can spend a lifetime here and never really be here.   It is time to explore and see cultural differences more and find out what this beautiful and vastly different culture is all about.  I am used to the random stares but know they will grow in intensity and number as I venture away from the city.  They challenge is I have only two days off a week and they are not together.  I will start out with day trips and then see what happens from there.  Yippeeeee!!