A Little Story About Well-being That Spreads

06 Sep A Little Story About Well-being That Spreads

Today, something happened that really moved me. It has to do with Transformation, what the Kanes teach and demonstrate, and it also has to do with being a part of this amazing community. I would like to share it with you. It goes as follows:

My husband, Christian, and I hired a new cleaning lady about a month ago – a very energetic woman in her early forties named Sara.* Christian and I chose Sara because we liked her. Since we are at home quite often, it was important that the person we hired was someone we would like to have around us. After interviewing Sara, we felt we would enjoy being in her presence, and we were right. Personally, I have come to like having energetic people around me because I like it when people feed me energy instead of me having to put energy into them. 

This morning, Christian came home after a night shift at the hospital where he works. Sara was in the kitchen whirling around, cleaning everything and putting things away, as Christian and I sat down together to plan our meals for  the week. In the past, I usually avoided helping to plan or cook our meals – being gone for work a lot of the time was a perfect excuse. But after my schedule changed so that I mainly worked from home, Christian  very rightly and clearly pointed out that it no longer made sense for him  to handle meals all by himself.  And I am actually quite good at looking in the fridge and composing dishes based on things that are in it. I come from a post-war family. My father stole vegetables after the war from the farmer’s fields because they didn’t have food. Back then, they called scrounging for food “to hamster.” (A side note: This term was used more recently to describe panic-buying of toilet paper!) So food was hardly ever thrown away in our family. But that’s a different story.

In any event, after Christian and I were done planning, Sara came up to us and asked, “Do you always do that together, plan for the week?” 

And we said, “Yes, mostly, but not always.”

Fast forward, two hours later: 

I was writing texts for my website and hadn’t heard Christian come home. (My home office is on the second floor.) 

Sara came up the stairs and said,  “Ahh, here you are.”

And I said, “Yes, why?” 

She replied, “Christian has come home and asked if you were upstairs.” 

“Oh, does he want me to come down and help him? Is he angry that I am still up here? I didn’t hear him come in.”

“No, he was very, very relaxed and said, ‘Uli is working on her website, she has a lot of work to do with it. If she’s upstairs, let’s let her work, that’s fine.’”

And then, Sara looked at me and said, “You know Uli, the way you and Christian are with each other, the way you treat each other, that’s really special, really extraordinary. The two of you are such role models for relationship.”

I was so touched by Sara’s comment that I am writing to you. This has largely to do with you – all of you, Ariel and Shya and everyone who participates in this community. I thought you should know that when we are like that with each other (kind and forgiving, working in partnership) it ripples out to others. 

When I look at my husband and myself, I know we are well together. Yes, we fight at times, and when that happens, he can’t do it right enough for me and all that. But I KNOW that we are in good shape together. If I look at my children, I KNOW they are doing well and are quite stable in themselves. I KNOW we are doing a good job as parents. But hey, if I let my thoughts speak, I am still extremely poor relationship material, along with  many other bad things.

But it was moving to have someone see Christian and I just being ourselves in our day-to-day lives, in our own home, and see that our way of being was special.  

*Sara’s name has been changed to preserve anonymity.