soul impression

First impressions, for most, are a paramount facet in any relationship. Given my own experiences with the diverse and unique souls I have come to know, hindsight has shown me that yes, my first impressions were indeed acutely accurate.

Do not confuse my reference to impressions with anything superficial. This is an instinct. A whisper soft knowing beneath my skull, smack dab between the eyes, and lower still—a feeling in my heart, in my gut. It’s this sweet whisper, ever so quiet that tells the truth. It isn’t intrusive, and it won’t try to dominate the other voice of consciousness, in your mind or wherever it may reside…for those whose consciousness lives in your heart I put my two weary hands together in applause for you.

This is something that must be approached with humility. Stop trying to think you always know what’s best. Surrender your voice, and the egotistical mode of thinking you know what’s best at all times, and just listen. If you’ve ever stopped to listen to a child without judgement, or to the gentle summer breeze that blows between the red waxy heads of tulips planted with care in rich garden earth, then you will find that listening to your voice within is a like experience. It’s not about reliance on logic but rather letting yourself be guided by a higher power, one that once you come to trust, will never misguide you.

A while back, when I lived in Peterborough, I often walked the twenty minute route to east city—crossing the wide Otonobee River on the Hunter Street Bridge. There is a health food store on the other side of this bridge where I used to shop for all kinds of delightful products such as vitamins, minerals and rice noodles. I knew the staff fairly well because it was a shop that I frequently appeared in over the course of a few years time. On one particular day, I entered the store looking for an iron supplement. I stood staring blankly at the hundreds of bottles of vitamins in search of my iron tablets…and though help would have been appreciated a salesman whom I’d never previously seen in the store appeared and began to aggressively sell me on his products. He stood very close to me, his six-foot-something frame towering over mine, and I have a clear memory of the way my gut dropped and the urge I had to run away immediately when he approached me. I left the store without my vitamins, dropping an excuse about having to make an appointment. The next time I passed by the store I saw him standing behind the glass store front window, and although I still needed to buy my vitamins, I chose to wait until he was not working.

Six months down the road, after designing a website for the owner of the same health food store I learned that the aforementioned salesman had recently been released from prison shortly before he had been hired to work in the store. Only a few weeks after my own experience, he abducted a woman who was shopping alone in the store. He bound her with duck-tape, took her into the back of the store, and raped her.

It was not a whisper-soft voice that told me to mistrust this man, but a scream. It was a reaction of my entire body, every cell recoiling from this man, pleading to persuade me to leave the store. It was so strong that I had but one choice and that was to listen.

But not all first impressions are so strong. It’s the times when I sense that someone has a controlling factor in their personality that I wish I’d listened more. Yes, these people might not cause direct harm, but do I really want a person in my life who will try to dictate and dominate? (Of course the answer is no).

And of course there are those where love is. Where being together is no less than heaven. In every relationship, there is always an element of risk. But to be brave and to refuse the ones who will harm, in order to embrace those who will love is the greatest way of life.