Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances playing on morning radio.

Memory: Guillemette’s brother gave me a cassette tape of Sheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.

We used to listen to the news in the morning. Then, my husband had some health wake-up calls and he made some life changes. He now turns on the Classical Station each morning. Thanks to WCPE, we regulate our nervous systems and enjoy quiet moments together over breakfast.

This morning a song brought me back to the hopeful, optimistic days of my early 20s when I moved to France to live with a family, friends of one of my mother’s dearest friends (Legacy post coming soon).

The sublime flute solo begins. All at once, I am filled with joy at the beauty of the solo, and also, I’m grabbed by the arising of a terrible feeling… and a thought: you had so many dreams, and here you are, amounting to nothing.

The power of music (like the power of a scent) brought me back to a specific time, and the hopeful open feelings of that time.

And then, a pattern, likely taught me by my parents, and passed down from their parents…through no fault of their own, and certainly not related to who they were, their loving essence.

“All that promise, and you amounted to nothing.” Ow!

Then, a lovely thing happened. I had the insight that this feeling was just a feeling; a feeling my father had. A judging energy of self-flagellation. I know this isn’t his essence. I have seen his love letters to my mother. I knew him as my father, long after their dating days, when he had already been a hard-working dad for 5 years. He had a lot of love for all of us. He also had acquired a habit of severe self-flagellation that he projected onto his family. Ow!

I am liberated from the pain of this pattern; from the feedback loop of having the feeling and feeding it with more self-judgment. It is not true. It is not based in reality. Oh!!!

So much gratitude for the joy of this insight and the resulting easing of the stranglehold which followed. You are just a thought, a habit of thinking passed down. And now, we heal it for ourselves and others, across time.

To loosely paraphrase Jack Kornfield, insight happens by accident, but meditating can make us more accident prone.