You know the feeling – getting huhu is when you get all mad and ticked off.  One of Aunty’s jobs is answering the phone, like a dispatcher or receptionist.  Most people are nice – especially sales people until you inform them that you aren’t interested in claiming your millions of dollars from the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes.

Some people are quite rude because they only want to speak with the boss instead of the receptionist.  Aunty usually bites her lip and holds back.   However, during her peak menopausal days of hormone changes and self-righteousness, Aunty was guilty of snapping at them and losing customers.  Ho! da terrible, yeah?  Maybe so, but it felt good at the time.

On the other side of the counter, back in the day when Aunty was a youngster, going into stores like Carol and Mary or McInerny’s (you remember them?) was like entering a freezer – the cold shoulder, the degrading looks, the down their nose attitude because their radars could tell that Aunty didn’t have money.

So Aunty would feel huhu, as well as hurt.  Not good – snapping back at rude people or getting mad and shame because of rude salespeople.  All water under the bridge, as they say, but still, those experiences left some scars and regrets.

Solution

Each work day, Aunty gets an email from Paul Tamashiro’s Daily Market Update.  Aunty subscribes to his free email service because he sends out the most current mortgage rates for 15 year/30 year/Jumbo/VA, etc. loans as well as an interesting article related to real estate and/or the economy.  He also provides some pretty wonderful quotes from known and unknown sources.

One of today’s quotes (from an anonymous source) was:

“When someone is nasty or treats you poorly, don’t take it personally. It says nothing about you and a lot about them.”

Oh man!  Is that a good one, or is that a good one!?!

Mahalo to Paul, who can be reached at paul.tamashiro@guaranteedrate.com.  Aunty never met or spoke with him, but would bet that he is a nice person.

There was drama of the highest OOPS! factor during the 2015 Miss Universe pageant with Miss Columbia being first tapped, then untapped as the winner, and Steve Harvey becoming the biggest blunder man on the planet.

Aunty used to watch these pageants in the past, but stopped watching decades ago.  It happened after an episode in which each contestant was asked the same question.  Each of them took a breath, breezed through their answers, were greeted with applause and cheers as they smiled, waved and glided back to their places in line.

The contestants were all beautiful, poised and had the same fixed smiles on their perfect faces.  If based on looks in their gowns or bathing suits, each of them was qualified to be the winner.  The revealing of their quality of thinking was in the question and answer portion of the competition.

That year, the question that was asked to each of them was, “If you could have anything that you wanted for yourself, what would it be?”

Without fail, every one of them answered perfectly.  “World peace.”

It drove Aunty batty.  You see, it wasn’t that their answer was wrong.  It was that they did not listen to the question being asked, and instead gave an answer that was incomplete, lacking thought, and impersonal.

A destination

That simple sounding question is one that requires a lot of soul searching, and complete honesty.  The answer is one asking for our individual selfish desires – if you could have anything that you wanted for yourself.

It is one that can be broken down into different timelines – today, this week, this month, this year, the next 5 years, a lifetime.

It can cover one or several categories – food, health, wealth, happiness, status, relationships, living arrangements, career choices, etc.

It is a question asking about your dreams and goals, your aspirations, your destiny.

Quiet place, deep thoughts

It is not a spur of the moment question for beauty queens vying for the Miss Universe title.  If they were completely honest and paid attention to what was being asked, each of their answers would be, “To win the crown.”  An answer that might paint them as shallow shells of beauty, but at least they were telling the truth.

It was a question that haunted Aunty for a long time (during her pre-Aunty days).   What if Aunty were put on the spot, and the winner got what they wanted.

This was before Aunty started going to investment seminars, self improvement courses, subscriptions to newsletters, or picking up books on life skills, success, etc.  The first task required from those gurus, authors, and mentors is to identify and define your goals in order to design your life’s roadmap to a targeted destination.

“If I could have anything I wanted for myself, what would it be?”

Aunty Batty

Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?  Sort of like Betty but just a smidgeon off.

One day, out of nowhere, the answer to that irritatingly haunting question came, like a bat (heh heh, sorry) from who knows where.  It is wildly unrealistic and improbable, it has been frustratingly non-existent in my hands during trying times, the ramifications of it may be troubling, but still, it is Aunty Batty’s answer.  Final answer and still holding true.

It would be to have the touch of healing.

Amen

What about you?  If you could have anything you wanted for yourself, what would it be?

All answers are acceptable, crowns included.

Aunty received an email from Nick of The Sacred Science team (no – not Scientology or wizard stuff) and it quoted Rumi.  Rumi was a 13th century Persian poet, scholar and mystic.  One beautiful quote attributed to him is “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

Another less beautiful but very wise quote is “Make like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”

Nick’s January 7 blog post was about carrying around emotional and/or physical baggage that drag us down and prevent us from getting better, stronger, or more capable of moving forward.  His suggestion was to have a fire ceremony to get rid of our bad stuff, our dead leaves.  This will allow new growth without our past and present hindrances.

He suggests:

• Cut 10 strips of paper to write on – the thinner the paper the better.  On each strip, write down a memory, habit, fear, or thought that is bothering you or something that you realize you need to let go because it is harmful or limiting you in your life.  Use a pen for this exercise.
• Light a small fire – it can be a fireplace (in Hawaii, a hibachi would work).  Please be safe.
• One by one, read aloud each word on each strip of paper.  Intensity of emotion is good – this is the junk stuff that we want out of our life.
• After you read each note, hold it over the flame and say “It is time for us to part ways. Goodbye.” Exhale as each piece of paper ignites and disappears.

According to Nick, this has helped him create an inner shift within himself and has been used for centuries by others to assist in healing of spiritual and physical wounds, as well as helping to unblock our inner traffic jams.

Aunty has plenty of traffic jams.  This is the start of a new year, and Aunty has yet to sit down to reflect and write down goals or resolutions.  One that would be foremost on that list would be getting rid of clutter and physical excesses in every room and closet.  Marie Kondo’s “The life-changing magic of tidying up” is helping (and will be in a future post).

Perhaps having the fire ceremony with one of the strips being “fear of getting rid of things that I don’t use because I might need it one of these days” will help speed along the process.

Perhaps writing down Aunty’s other negative thoughts and emotions that have been pushed far back and away will bring it unwelcomingly to light, so that they can be released and removed upon burning and bidding them farewell.

Aunty will be doing this soon, when nobody is in earshot (or the neighbors might think that Aunty is batty).

Perhaps Aunty will then Make like a tree and leaf, anew.