Is it my usual conundrum of finding little to say when I am feeling happy and/or content? Am I incapable of talking about happy things? I guess I have an internal obligation that drives me towards a balanced sort of sincerity. Not rose-colored. If I am going to open my heart, it feels pointless and even derailing to leave out the yuckier stuff. Or even if I don’t specify the details, my overall outlook must contain the mixture of the whole spectrum of experience and emotion. I have spent far too much of my life omitting. Either I omit the positive or the negative. Usually this is done to kowtow to someone nearby. Or maybe someone powerfully embedded inside me.
I recently Kowtowed to someone, in the more literal sense of a bow. I felt a deep urge to show my respect and gratitude, and as I had witnessed this sort of gesture in the past, I already suspected what a powerful effect it might have. In this country we don’t demonstrate this way to one another, but there is something inexpressibly connecting and rich about it, eliciting a sense of our humanity rarely achieved in other ways.

originally published on 12/5/10