Contractions

Do you ever have an interaction with a stranger and think afterwards “they weren’t real.” Like, they definitely were an angel, or a robot, or an alien somehow placed in that exact moment by the universe to deliver a message you desperately needed to hear. Cuz… same. In fact, it happened to me the other day. While taking my delightful little fur baby for his morning walk he stopped to do his business, as one does whilst in the wilderness. I avoided eye contact in respect of his privacy and stared up into the majestic redwoods I now found myself living amongst. I took a deep breath in to let the crisp morning fog cleanse my lungs and listened for sounds only nature could create. Unfortunately, my ears where met with one of nature’s less pleasant noises, the sound of my dog taking a massive shit… which I can only liken to the noise a ketchup bottle makes when you're down to the last little bit. How peaceful.

My main man Raj has a sensitive stomach and from time to time his digestive system goes awol. As you can imagine, having a dog with stomach sensitivities is much like having a kid with a peanut allergy… fucking stupid. Nonetheless, it was his morning shit river that led me to Whole Foods to pick up some chicken and rice for my little homie. I don’t often find myself in the meat section (giggity), but when I do I appreciate good company. So as I was approached by an employee wearing a rastacap and an infectious smile I couldn’t have been happier. He had a look reminiscent of the jellyfish from Shark Tale… which indicated to me I was about to be thoroughly entertained, so I sparked up a conversation while he packaged up my chicken. (Did that sound sexual to anyone else?)

“How’s your day going?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“It’s fantastic. Just dealing with these contractions, but you know all I gotta do is breathe and relax,” he replied nonchalantly.

Lol. I knew it. The entertainment had begun.

“Contractions?” I questioned.

“Yeah,” He replied. “Every day I wake up, I read these news headlines, and it’s like I’m having a contraction. This shit is painful. But it’s alright, like I said all we gotta do is breathe, relax, and remember that baby is coming. Everything is going to be real bad for a moment, and we are gonna be like all those ladies in the delivery room cursing their baby daddy’s for doing this to them, but in the end we gon end up with something beautiful. Ain’t nothing worth having come easy.”

I stared at him in disbelief of what I just heard. Ima be real, I thought I was about to get some voodooo mama juju ish after his first comment, but he ended up saying the realest thing I had heard in a minute. He had just analogized our entire political climate to childbirth, and it made perfect sense.

I had never thought about things in this light before, but his analogy beautifully captured the necessity of pain and struggle. He implied that all of the difficulty we were experiencing now would be worth it when “our baby” finally arrived. “Don’t nobody care what their baby looks like, right? They just want it to be healthy, and I know our baby is going to be perfect,” he said with a grin. I laughed, still in disbelief of the message this man was delivering. I mean, he was right. Sure, sometimes, you get knocked up by an arrogant, orange faced, misogynistic asshole, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to love the baby when the whole thing is over.

And as far as I am concerned, we are doing a pretty good job of preparing to unfuck ourselves (what a classy way to describe childbirth, amirite?). Society is advancing, and consciousness is expanding. Transformation is about the individual and the collective. It takes a personal revolution to ignite societal change, and jellyman had just made me realize that perhaps hope wasn’t lost. People are waking up all over the world, and once you know you can’t un-know. No matter how hard you try to burry the truth, it will still reside within you begging to be acknowledged.

I will say though, that life makes it hard to remember the truth. We easily are lost in anger, sadness, frustration, and anxiety forgetting how wildly supported we are by a divine force. And it makes sense. Life is not easy, and as I had just had reiterated to me, it’s not meant to be. It is the pain and struggle that make the beauty so magnificent, but remembering the necessity of our unique journeys is one of life’s greatest challenges. In my moments of darkness, I like to think the universe sends some encouragement. A sign so that we can remember that there is no shadow light cannot cast out, and no matter how dark things may seem the light would always return.

I watched as he put the finishing touches on the carefully packaged poultry I requested, and he smiled as he leaned over the counter to hand it to me. thanked I him for such a wonderful conversation and asked him his name.

“Irie” he said, “like sun ray, but Irie.”

When I got back into my car, I looked up what Irie’s name meant, just for the hell of it. I was surprised (but not) to find out it’s a Jamaican word meaning “everything is alright and fine.” A little gift from the universe, clearly. I set my phone down, laid my head back onto the headrest of my carseat, and laughed. And in that moment, I swore I could hear the universe laughing with me too.