It was quite some time ago; I was approaching my 50ties birthday, and it seemed to be a scary time. I was close to a very serious and advanced age. It is strange how with passing time I sometimes get younger rather than older. Not chronologically, of course, but in my mind. The first time it happened to me was when I was 24 years old. I have been married for two years and reality did not match my naïve expectations of happiness ever after. I was restless and discontented with my life, but I was already 24! It seemed to me that is was too late to change my life, too late for true happiness, too late for anything really. I decided that I had to stay in the unsatisfactory situation to the end of my miserable life. I am exaggerating a bit; I was naïve but not that silly as all that. I remember one beautiful summer morning when I felt so unhappy in spite of warm and yet fresh air and sweet ripe apricots I could pick directly from the tree growing next to the terrace linking to my bedroom. I was visiting my in-laws outside Warsaw, and this was a great place. Silly me, I did not recognize the paradise around me, I was just thinking about the drudgery of life ahead of me. It was going to be a life of duty to follow once given promise. Divorce did not seem to enter my mind. I have to commend myself for that. I was going to honour the vows in spite of making a mistake in marrying too early, almost against my parents' judgment and with no life experience. This is another reflection and a rather serious one. As this post is not a serious type of a post, I leave it for later, maybe...
What I want to say is that at the time I was twenty-four and thought I was already too old for changes. We struggled for the next two years, and I somehow started to feel young enough to put mistakes behind me and start again. This time, I decided that from now on no marriage for me. Possibly living in sin, if I happen to come across true love, but no marriage! I believed it spoils romance and makes any relationship drudgery. It is quite fun to recollect such moments and difficult to think that it was actually me. So I got younger after two years and reorganized my life to become an independent woman. I remained independent, but not for a long time unmarried.
I did not think about my age until approaching fifties. Suddenly, I started to think about myself as a person becoming old, and I got scared. I was not prepared for that.
When attending a business seminar at the Sydney Entertainment Centre led by Tom Peters, I found a flyer on my seat advertising Tony Robbins “Unleash the Power Within”. It was called a seminar, so I was under impression that it had something to do with business. It promised to change my life in a positive way, and I thought: this is just the thing to prepare me for crossing over to fifties. I even got my company to pay for the program so strong was my belief in attending a business seminar. My husband must have read the leaflet more carefully than myself, and he decided to join me. Maybe the power within was to be unleashed, but not his wife. I will always be impressed by his move, clever and supportive even if a bit controlling.
When I read that the part of the program included a fire walk it was too late to change my mind. If I withdrew, I would lose my self-respect, I would consider myself a coward, it would hurt me rather than help to combat the resistance to getting old. And one Friday evening we showed up at the Sydney Entertainment Centre and were immediately surrounded by rather strangely enthusiastic people. Not our class, darling, I though. Tony Robbins did not make a good impression on me either. I was standing amongst this strange crowd and totally disapproved. It was a strange environment, and I knew that it was a big mistake, a huge one! There was no way out though and Tony in preparing his audience for the fire walk scared us out of our wits. First, he scared us and then taught us how to manage the walk. It was NLP in action. Anchoring, mirroring and matching and other skills to help us with this crazy activity which was ahead of us. I realized that I might disapprove of the undignified movements we were encouraged to follow, but if I do not listen to what he says I either will not do the walk or burn myself rather badly. So I started to do the oooooh… while pretending that I was a plane taking a turn followed by an energetic clap of the hands. Then we were supposed to make a fist. I felt very silly, but that lasted only for a while, and then I was taking off with the best of them making silly noises and then making a fist. This was anchoring of a resourceful state in which we were going to march into the burning coals. I was amused and impressed looking at my normally very sane Swedish husband doing his oooooh and pretending to fly. It was not his scene, and I think he did it for his crazy Polish wife. It must have been love.
Then the time came when we were supposed to cue for the walk. There were several places where the coals were burning. We picked one. I was shaking, wondering if I can do it, but I was clenching my fist as if my life depended on it repeating the walk mantra under my breath. When we were very close to our start, my husband offered to show me how to do it and go first. I would not have it. I wonder what it says about me, hmm… Then I went… the coals felt as it they were cool, I was in a trance. I can not remember how many steps there were, perhaps not too many, but I felt the heat of the fire on my face. At the end of the walk somebody poured a bucket of cold water over my feet, another crazy stranger hugged me, my husband was close behind, and the trial was over. We hugged people around us, and we jumped out of joy. It was fantastic! And it was over!
On reflection, it was the peak of my life so far. Big, big achievement, touching support of somebody I loved and the next half of my life was still ahead of me. I felt as if I was flying while coming home over the Harbour Bridge in the early morning hours. I was full of brave, exciting plans. I felt unstoppable like Tony promised. He said it will change my life and it did.
I was really well prepared to face my fifties and I actually started to feel young again. The time started to rewind itself like it did when I was twenty-six. For some time at least. Maybe another fire walk?
