A Rough Start

When the five us met last week to plan for the hello love launch, Heidi gave us a chance to really focus on what the heck we were doing OTHER than all the logistical things: like doing a website, making t-shirts, cutting business cards, building placards. We're all smart women of the millenium, we knew how to do all that.

But did we really know what the purpose of hello love was? Why were we specifically involved? Did we know what it meant personally in our own lives before we worried about how we affected others? ARE WE READY TO DO THIS?

Well, I'll give it to that Heidi, she can sniff out "a need" in a second, so she brought us together for a short centering. Her backyard on a rare fresh Los Angeles morning was the perfect place to gather in meditation (An aside: I used to hate the word meditation because it brings up a lot of high fallutin' spiritual nonsense to me, so I keep it simple: Close eyes, be quiet; I pray=I talk; I meditate=God talks back. :)

Ten clarifying minutes later and I knew I wasn't ready to do this "thing" called hello love. Hell, I couldn't say it without either (1) pretending I was a Brit (the Queen's English or a cockney spitfire, sometimes a combination of both); or (2) rolling my eyeballs and dripping with sarcasm at how CORNY it all was. I deserved to be fired.

As we went around the group, what Heidi spoke about and honored was our own individual process in this thing called "hello love." Me? I didn't think I could go out there meeting people when the words won't come off of my lips "properly" -- good grief this was going to be embarrassing and boy, do I feel like frickin' FRAUD.

But that was going to be okay. I tried to look further down the road at the possibilites -- how simply we could really change our lives (and others' lives) down the road. Come on, I told myself... did you not just share with your friends that in a supermarket in Sacramento you told yourself you'd say a mental "hello love" to all the people shopping alone? Did you not have fun? Did you not get a lovely smile or greeting back from 90% of the people you tried to connect with? And most of all -- did you not feel your life was BETTER in those few minutes?

Today I was so grateful that my computer could get fixed under warranty (read: FREE) that I was ready to maul the Geek Squad clerk over the counter with hugs, kisses and pinches on the cheek -- but Greg the Geek was having NONE of it. I wanted so badly for him to know how good a job he did with me, that he deserved to get promoted to CEO that day, pronto! But barring an arrest, I decided to mentally wish him "hello love." HELLO LOVE. H-E-L-L-O?

Nary a smirk out of this 22-year-old -- he was like a "grampa" who'd just seen too much fal-der-a to care about anything anymore! Greg wasn't present to receive my wishes, so young but preoccupied with... who knows, girls? Death? Tight undies? I don't know. But just then I realized it wasn't about his receiving it... it was about me embodying hello love and trying it out.

I changed a few molecules in the world with love right there at Best Buy... and whether or not my Geek friend got it or not wasn't up to me. I knew my work had just begun.