“I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.” Kurt Cobain
I was walking down the street carrying a newly purchased $40 black Buddah under my arm. When a man in an old Toyato Corrola winked at me from inside his car. Now given, this is Hintonburg -- I'm pretty sure he wasn't looking for a trick. Unless there is a new string of hookers walking around with Buddahs. Perhaps it's a code that I, not keeping up on hooker trends, didn't even know about. Some sort of weird Buddhist fetish thing...
There is the possibility that he's a guy I know and I didn't recognize him. Still it made me chuckle. And we'll never know what he wanted because I didn't stop. (Probably for the best.) Still I was smiling and saying hello to folks along the street.
All in all, it had been a very good week. The 1st year on my forties ended with little hooplah. (or is it the last year of my 30s?) I settled a rather long standing issue with a former employer. In the end, I got exactly what I wanted and then a bit more. To top it all off, I found this Buddah and he had to come home with me. Right then1.
Buddah is now sitting on my baker's rack, laughing. Because the kitchen is the most sacred spot in this house and well, it means he's facing me when I work here. I like that. I think he's supposed to live in the garden but so did the gargoyle and he's never seen winter either. He's an indoor laughing Buddah.
I was thinking about the girl at Herb and Spice. Buddah made her smile too. "Oh you bought a Buddah," she said. I laughed. I suppose most customers don't put a Buddah on the counter as they pay for their broccoli. She asked if I wanted a bag for Buddah. That just seemed wrong... "No, I want to carry him home like this." She gave me a warm smile and a knowing nod.
All this Buddah stuff did get me thinking about a question posed to someone's status Facebook.
Who do you want to be? It said.
I dislike this question. Because it implies that I shouldn't want to be myself. And quite frankly, I don't want to be anyone else. (Even when life was turbulent I don't think I ever wanted to be anyone else.) Simply because I don't think that gets you anywhere. There are people whose talents and skills I admire, people I'd love to work with and be mentored by, people whose successes and failures have a lot to teach me, people I'd love to befriend. But, I really don't want to be anyone other than genuinely and authentically me -- real and true me. Aiming to be anyone else is a lie, and every time I've deviated from my true path, it's led to all sorts of misery. I think this is the sort of answer they were trying to elicit (or maybe not) But it occured to me that this is entirely the wrong question. But I'm not sure exactly what the right one is. But I didn't post that to Facebook.
All that aside though... right at that moment, I wanted to be the woman walking down Wellington street with a Buddah tucked under her arm. Life is good, people. Life is good.
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1. Upon showing my new purchase to The Man, he raised an eyebrow, which I interpreted to mean he thought $40 was too much to spend on a black volcanic ash Buddah. (I actually saw the same Buddah online for $48 + shipping) He says not so... maybe it was more questioning my sanity. This morning, he said he liked Buddah. This makes me happy.
