If not now, when?

Recently I met a lovely man and now am dating him.

Things were set in motion on September 19th and 20th, 2009, when I participated in the Foundation Weekend of the Advancement of Excellence (AOE). During that seminar, I chose an area of focus for the following six weeks. Now I'm attending weekly meetings with the members of a small group of fellow AOE participants. We are supporting each other in making progress in our respective areas of focus.

As I've mentioned before, I regard the AOE as a Phase 1 course. As Robert Scheinfeld says, though, if a Phase 2 Player avails him or herself of a resource that nominally belongs to Phase 1, the Phase 2 Player may still derive great benefit from it. He advocates living in reactive mode and doing whatever you feel drawn to doing, regardless of labels.

During the AOE Foundation Weekend, we did an exercise that revealed to us the levels of satisfaction we were experiencing in different areas of life (family, career, finances, health, and so on). To my surprise, the exercise showed me that the lack of an intimate relationship was bothering me more than I previously had realized. It was even more important to me than the marketing of Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community, the project I had assumed would be my area of focus.

So I went with the flow and selected "intimate relationship" as my area of focus for the AOE. Before I completed the Foundation Weekend on the Sunday night, I committed to my AOE team that I would register with a match making website by our Wednesday night meeting. I went home, logged onto a website that an AOE group member had recommended, threw up the photo of myself that appears on this blog, completed the questionnaire, and dashed off a profile.

I then searched the website for men in my age group who lived within a reasonable radius of Nanaimo. In my naïveté about the protocols of these match making websites, I sent messages to about half a dozen men. I said something like, "Hi John. It looks as if we have several interests in common. Judy."

I subsequently discovered that I could have waited to see which men put me on their lists of favourites. I then would have had the option of putting them on my list of favourites. Apparently that is the cyber equivalent of smiling at each other across the room before you speak. But I was a babe in the woods, and didn’t know that.

When I woke up the following morning, I found responses waiting from some of the men whom I’d contacted. On top of that, some new men had sent me messages.

It was a Monday, and we at Pacific Gardens were preparing for our ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday. Besides that, I was going to be leaving home on Wednesday morning to nurse a friend who’d had surgery. I also had to prepare my apartment to be painted while I was away at my friend’s house.

I felt overwhelmed by the messages on the match making website. I wondered what I could do to make the sifting process more manageable. I quickly scanned through the men's profiles. They all said they liked the outdoors, as I do. I cast about for an additional filter.

In my cursory scan of the profiles, I noticed that there was only one man who had mentioned a spiritual search. He had studied under a guru in India. I didn't care about the exact nature of his search, but I appreciated the fact that he was a seeker. His name was David, and he lived on one of the Gulf Islands off the coast of Vancouver Island. He was one of the men with whom I’d initiated contact. In his response, he’d provided me with a link to a website on which he had posted some of his writings.

To protect myself from overload and to carve out some time in which to read David's material, I decided to communicate only with him. I replied to the invitations for coffee by saying, "Thanks, but no thanks." I switched my profile on the match making website to invisible mode, so that no one else would find me.

I sent David a message telling him what I had done. I made it clear that my actions did not represent a commitment or implied obligation. However, I did want to make time to read some of his work, as it would help to give me a sense of who he was. I reciprocated by giving him links to my two blogs. I felt they too would give him a chance to find out more about me.

Around 11:00 am on Tuesday, when I was about to shut down my computer, have a bath, and change for the Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community ribbon-cutting ceremony, I spotted a message from David. He said that, if I was amenable to the idea, he could drive to Nanaimo, and we could go out for dinner that evening. The only obstacle was that, if we did that, he would miss the last ferry back to his island. He asked if there was a place he could stay if he brought his sleeping bag.

I started typing a reply. I said it was a super idea, but unfortunately I was about to participate in our ribbon-cutting ceremony, then I had to pack a bag for my move to my friend, and I had to prepare things for the painter, so I couldn't possibly fit in a date. But I really appreciated his suggestion, and would be delighted to take him up on it at some point in the future. I looked at my diary to identify a rough time frame during which I’d be available. I realized I had a free slot somewhere towards the end of November, a couple of months out.

The words of the first century rabbi, Hillel, rang in my ears, "If not now, when?" I took a deep breath, deleted my message, and started over. I thanked David for his invitation, and said it sounded delightful. I went on to say that we had two guest rooms in the Pacific Gardens Common House and, if he brought his sleeping bag, he could stay in one of them.

Just after we Pacific Gardeners had finished clearing up following our joyful opening celebration, David arrived with a bunch of flowers for me. We hopped in his vehicle and drove downtown. I listed the restaurants that I liked, which included Lebanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Mexican cuisine. The Middle Eastern one appealed to him, so that's where we went.

When the waitress filled our water glasses, I asked her if there was a special. She said there was, and described a fish dish. I said, "Thank you. That's what I'll have." David said, "Would you make that two fish dishes?" The waitress didn’t even have a chance to give us menus. We were too interested in finding out about each other.

After dinner, we went for a walk along the harbour. We talked till 3:00 am. We found each other extremely likeable, and discovered that we had even more interests in common than our internet correspondence had suggested.

On his way out of Nanaimo the following morning, David dropped me at my friend’s house. As I cared for her that day, I was operating on very little sleep. But I had boundless energy from being on cloud nine.

David returned to Nanaimo to visit with me this past weekend, ten days after our first date. I feel so grateful that I met him after I'd done The Wall and the AOE Foundation Weekend, during which I had learned so much about myself. I was as authentic as I knew how to be from the get go. I got the sense that David knew himself very well and was equally honest. By the time we were half way through our second date, I felt as if I'd known him for a much longer time than actually had been the case.

We do not regard ourselves as being in a committed relationship by any means. It’s way too early for that. After all, we’ve only had two dates so far. On the other hand, we have acknowledged that we are dating. My comment on that is that it sure feels nice to be cherished.