Life With Intention

When I was growing up, my grandmother was a private duty nurse and her schedule alternated one week day shifts and one week night shifts. An older family friend would meet me at home after school on the day weeks and I would sleep at her apartment on the night weeks. Already, almost 90 at that time, she was 'old Los Angeles', she saw Wilshire boulevard when there celery fields growing down it.

She was a wonderful old woman, she had very precise ways of doing things. She taught me intention. To say something to yourself right before you started doing it. If you were going to walk somewhere instead of taking the bus, she would tell me, say to yourself that you are doing this for exercise, to lose weight. Be crystal clear with yourself about why you are doing things the way you are doing them and for what reason. Say the reason you are doing something and what you want from what you were doing.

When I got to be around 14, I no longer needed her to care for me. After school once a week, I would take the bus to her apartment and just visit with her and talk. She would make us hot chocolate and have a plate of coconut cookies or small bran muffins with lots of butter and we would sit at her little dining table. I would tell to her about what was going on in my life and my problems and she would help me by giving me books to read or teaching me ways to work with myself and to ask myself questions before I went to sleep, because the answers are inside of you. I always left refreshed after and hour or so and walked home. What she told me always worked, I always learned something. She taught me to look inside myself and ask questions - talk to myself and listen.
Trust yourself, every heart vibrates from that iron string. -Emerson