I’m a keen observer. As I travel with my coaching clients, my focus is on the beauty of a human journeying… how are they reacting to change, are they ready for adventure, have they leaned into discovery? What is waiting to emerge? I study their tells, and I delight in noticing the nuances of their experience so that I can catch them in an epiphany and we can pivot around a new understanding. Some people fall in love with landscapes, I fall in love with people. 

So I am caught completely off-guard when this client turns the tables at lunch one day …

“Oh yes, I remember, it is one of your little idiosyncrasies to eat your salad with your fingers.”

I giggle (I think salad was meant to be a sensory experience - I love the gentle feel of picking up a soft piece of lettuce or a rounded edge of a carrot) but the giggle doesn’t come from having been found out, it and then the deep warm flush afterward, come from having been seen… 

And not judged. 

Weeks later I am still thinking about it; feelings of joy have continued to resonate from that moment. My teacher, Zen master Flint Sparks, often reminds me that our most basic needs rise up as 3 questions … “Is anyone there? Can you see me? Will you choose me?” 

So the sweetness of this moment is not surprising, it ticks all three - a shared moment with someone that has chosen to hold me with tenderness. It gifted me with a knowing - that my presence was noted, my tell accepted as a funny little expression of me.

Our culture is obsessed with pronouncing opinions, always judging, always jostling for the position of “who is right”. The whole influencer culture is based on our belief that someone can proclaim the goodness or the badness of something. The result? We get busy layering on the “should” of performance instead of the grace of being. Ironic, while we are challenging all the misogynistic, patriarchal, bigoted rules around us we are at the same time judging one another more and more. 

These days I am keen to explore what it means to love without judgment and attachment to expectations. I notice how many conditions we place on one another. When ‘what I want’ becomes a directive on how you should be and behave, we’ve confused clear expression with expectation. But what about treating one another with grace and being intensely present to the delightful quirks that make each of us unique? Can we move from 'the one way" of doing things, wearing things, saying things, into the plurality that comes with human expression?

I’m on a writing sabbatical in Cartagena and the air is thick with heat and a Caribbean vibe. I’m at a swanky hotel, the kind where they remember your name, your drink, and your lunch order.

I smile as I put my napkin on my lap. 

I see they did not set me a fork.

In Celebration

Tania Carriere