A Women in a world where only the Heart mattered (A short, fictional story for my young friend with an old soul - by me)

A Women in a world where only the Heart mattered – a recollection by a women, who knew a women, who chose to never stop believing in people and in the essence of the Human Spirit

Every year Siobhan watched the seasons flow from one into the next. An unmarried thirty something urbanite, she was deeply removed from what the world regarded as “normal”. She walked slowly in her fast paced world and while her thoughts raced faster than many others. By public vocation, she was an attractive women with olive skin that felt soft to the touch and a shape that naturally seduced. Her full lips were beautifully closed as when she spoke, she whipped with smart cheeky retorts.

Short of no male attention, she resorted daily to her peaceful and neatly placed home finding rest in her crisp white Egyptian cotton sheets. She would have preferred her king size bed to be shared with an absolute equal and endearing partner who kept her in his arms…forever.  Her fancies deemed simple, were exquisite and none of her struggles met the naked eye. Siobhan lived a good life outside of her personal and intimate struggles. She rose up daily and blossomed to the day.

Nature touched her.  Each magnificent “dress”, as she would call it for each season’s visibly apparent effects, uniquely moved her being. The winter touched her spirit into creating warm winter comfort meals for one…and sometimes for five close artists, innovators, academic and philosophical friends. Summer saw her have girlfriends merry over summer luncheons to light music, chilled Shiraz wines and bubbly, while their childlike laughter echoed elegantly through the air like chime bells in the summer breeze. Spring, her birthday month, always took her a step closer to another year in age with inward reflection. And her beloved “mother’s autumn” leaves strewn in quiet suburban avenues she walked daily before or after work, reminded her of her beautiful mother always.

Every year simply flowed, happened or passed. Many months were deliberately busy with career cajoled activities. Many months were responsive and equally many months were reactive. Daily Siobhan pursued her days with confident, determined and reckless abandon. It was also in these days that she realized just how hard life can be. How people struggled with simple matters. How complicated matters were simplified to cope and how humans were in a state of desperately seeking love, acceptance and materialism. Not that any of that really mattered or moved her since Siobhan too was as worldly as most, momentarily blending well into a chaos called life. What she could never understand was the soul destroying sacrifices and personal sabotage that was “okayed” to go “further”.

It was a particular month, a particular season and a particular relationship that displaced Siobhan so deeply that she knew, she had to be what she always believed in. She had to be good in the face of everything that commanded her to be the exact opposite.  There was struggle and for weeks her crisp white sheets were tear drenched. The heavy rain-filled nights compared lightly to her tears that flowed easily and endlessly.  The thunderstorms could not keep up with her inner storms in a time of inner turmoil and pain. There was simply no comfort, no answers and no explanations. Siobhan found fleeting comfort in her artistically expressed talents and tried to make sense of why people behaved with contempt and which she knew went against everything the human spirit to be. In her season, there were storms, no blossoms, dead leaves and frostbiting coldness. Nothing and no one made sense. She knew nothing of any of her former beliefs but she held on tightly to three things that hadn’t changed since her childhood.

She knew people are essentially good and this was regardless of how they behaved or hurt her. She knew she may have been bruised by some of life happening to her in “unconscious motion, but she chose to never deliberately hurt anyone. She knew she was the result of an ultimately “good source”. She also knew that in knowing all this, even in a year where little made sense and where her seasons were climatic to the conditions of her turmoiled heart, she had to hold on to being good.

Siobhan looked around at people she loved and trusted and enjoyed the lessons they taught her through their fiery arrows. She saw through the chaos and she knew they knew no better and needed to be forgiven. Siobhan rose up against all hurt knowing that it was love that only mattered. So daily she stepped into one of her collection of Swiss handmade designer heels, stepped out fragrantly beautiful, and chose to change the world for good in approaching it from good.

This is my simple recollection of some of my intimate conversations with Siobhan and it’s fleeting insights into her enigmatic soul .I was particularly fortunate to have met her and went on to worked for Siobhan as her business adviser and operations head for 12 great years. Our relationship formed in the most natural and incidental of ways when I attended a business function at which she was a keynote speaker. At the time I had not realized that in accepting a late invitation to attend, would be one of the most defining 12 years of my life.

It was as the business dinner and evening progressed into hearty debate on climate change and economic urgencies, Siobhan and I found ourselves gratefully taking a moment on a quiet balcony.  It was 50 floors from ground, that she sophisticatedly tugged at her cigarette and while I quietly looked over the city lights holding securely onto my drink, that we found a quiet moment. The same moment which described a commonality between both us women – strangers with the same need to find quiet in the noise. It was where we went on to spend a significant part of the rest of the evening unnoticed and unmissed. Where in hindsight, our perfect exchange of words crafted the foundation of years that followed as colleagues, confidants and friends.

I never looked back since and when I did, I only saw a women who loved regardless. Who believed in people. A women who was prepared to risk all comfort and to explore the cited “impossible” for some of the same humans who did hurt her back then, and who went on to do so.

Siobhan went on to accomplish personally and in business. Mostly though, she went on to achieve what she wanted for people – after all it was in people whom she profoundly believed in.

True to the meaning of her name, she had grace. 

Image Credit: My friend.