Door or Eyelash?

Groupon is a beautiful thing I discovered again about a month ago when I found two items there at rock bottom prices I could not do without: Eyelash extensions and a series of 20 gyrotonics classes.  Sporting my pretty new glue on lashes I pranced along to my first gyro class.  My teacher was an adorable bright, young spark. She even commented on how nice my lashes looked.  We started right on time and she guided my classmates and me through our movements with clear instruction and beautiful demonstrations.  She had a terrific eye for proper alignment, a crucial component in gyro and offered helpful corrections, always with kind encouragement and a ready smile. I liked her and as a woman many years her senior I felt that Mommy urge kick in to want to help her pursue her dreams if ever I could. I was raised by non-church going parents and a Buddhist nanny but I’m pretty sure the above means I’m Jewish or must’ve been in a past life. I’ve been the beneficiary of guidance from elders and as they take their leave for higher plateaus I feel the life mantle fall increasingly on my shoulders to help nudge young careers forward if and when I can. Anyway…..during the course of the class I learned that my teacher was a dancer and planned soon to head to LA to check out the scene there.

Click! I knew just the right person to introduce her to: Val, a legendary dancer pal in LA whose career track over the last few years has transitioned into being a very significant choreographer, actress and master class dance teacher.  Val herself had danced for many of the most notorious choreographers of her day and now she in turn was actively involved in passing along her download to the next and next generations of up and coming dancers.

At the end of class I asked my young teacher if I might introduce her to my LA dancer pal? She accepted and we exchanged emails.  By the end of the next day a round of messages had been sent and I was thrilled to know that these two lovelies would be meeting up over the coming days.  Very smugly I felt I’d done a mitzvah. “I’d opened a door”, I thought in obnoxious self congratulations and imagined the downbeat to a grand mentorship that surely lay ahead.

Two weeks later my teacher returned from LA bronzed and sporting, I noticed, a snappy set of glue on lashes.  Excited to learn what had transpired I asked how their meeting had gone? My expectations of hearing about a bold new path having opened in her life were dashed when she reported that she had not had the time to meet with Val. Further she gleefully told me she had managed to find a great place to get eyelash extensions.  Really? Found time to get eyelashes glued on and failed to meet with glorious Val who would have changed her life? If my young teacher could have but touched the knob on this ready door a world of shortcuts, wisdom, experience, introductions had awaited her on the other side. Mighty me sat in judgement throughout my next hour in gyro class.   On my walk home afterwards other voices entered the fray of my disappointment. How many thresholds had I failed to cross, how many ready doors had I ignored? How many hours wasted “getting lashes” or the equivalent of, had I wasted when I had been her age? For that matter, now? How many hours have I wasted over even the last month on Facebook, or mindlessly watching the news rather than reading or meditating or working out?  How many doors have I opened that would have been better if they had remained closed?

Immediate overwhelm and I return to stewing in disappointment over my beautiful young teacher’s failure to meet Val.

Eventually I have to make my peace knowing she will find her own good way in her own good time.  I struggle to get ego back in its cage and commit to the best of my ability to watch for open doors I should walk through and thresholds I should not cross.  Is it, however, time to book an appointment for another set of lashes?